Hey friends, Dave here with Transfer Express, and today I want to cover some quick tips for
printing on those zip-up hoodies. Now, we're going to show a couple different ways you could print
first avoiding that front zipper seam and then we'll cover printing over that front
seam and we'll finish with decorating on the back with the correct placement to avoid that
graphic being completely covered by the hood when it's worn down so are you ready let's zip it up
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i am a big fan of zip up hoodies and while they still present some of the challenges that come
with printing on any type of hoodie we'll show you how we can avoid the seams for that perfect
pro level printing now before we jump back to the heat press i want to mention that we're going to
be using our goof proof screen printed transfers for our examples here today i love goof proof
because it's a durable and lightweight plastisol ink transfer that looks washes wears and feels
exactly like a traditional screen print all we'll have to do is cut these out when we
are ready to print and i'll show you exactly how you can knock hoodies out like a pro now that we
are back here at our hotronix 16 by 20 auto clam i already have our hoodie loaded on the platen
now this print method where we're going to print directly on the front over the zipper
is recommended only for higher quality heat presses that you know you could get a nice firm
pressure on and have that ability to fully thread your garment onto the press like we
have here essentially we just opened it up and slid it right over top like it's a pillow case
the first step to printing directly over this closed zipper is going to be pre-press this
with our goof-proof transfers we always recommend pre-pressing the garment to pull some moisture out
i don't see any extra steam coming off but as you can see there is a clear platen mark here
and that's just the color uh changing because of the moisture content between uh the unpressed and
now this pressed side next up we're going to grab our transfer and simply just lay it down over top
of all of these seams and with that heavy pressure we should have a great result now we'll use the
same methods that we use all the time to make sure that we are aligned properly on the hoodie
nice and centered and also at that exact placement that we want to be right on the chest and not down
on the belly so right here we're going to just take our graphic and i'm going to hold it up to
the light and just ensure or take our graphic and fold it at both the top and the bottom to
make a little crease now that's going to be right where our zipper line is going to be on the top
and on the bottom now we're going to want to make sure that we're about three or four fingers
down from the collar on this hoodie because it is a 2x on the larger side so we'll go
three or four let's just go up just a tiny bit here and sew right from our hood seam
and we're just about four inches down from the collar and it looks great we look nice and even
and centered we do have the zipper zipped all the way up holding both sides of this hoodie together
now once we're happy with the placement we have that pressure adjusted so that is set and accurate
on our heat press now we'll go ahead and press this 365 degrees for just four to six seconds
goof proof is a hot peel so we'll remove the carrier away immediately and there we're left
with an absolutely awesome screen print so you could take an exacto knife and now split the seam
right down the middle because that ink is holding that seam together or you could simply just take
the zipper and zip it right on down and it will split the transfer exactly where it needs to and
once you zip it up it closes right back up there removing it off the plate and you can see that
with a heavier pressure we are still able to get some great results here printing over any seams
like that will always yield some inconsistent results as long as your customer is okay with the
outcome and you're happy with the final product should have absolutely no issues printing this way
all right now that we printed that first hoodie if you don't have a super high pressure locking
quality heat press like this hotronix auto clam here there is another way that you could achieve
a very similar result uh with just a couple accessories so the first thing we're going to do
is we're just going to go ahead and unzip this hoodie real quick and then we're going to grab
our mouse pads we love these mouse pads for raising the print area and that's exactly
what we're going to do here so we'll just go ahead and slide this one in on this side
i want to make sure that we are off this seam here so that the seam falls flat we'll do something
exactly the same and we'll repeat the same step on to the other side right here now once we're
happy with that we could kind of zip it back up and ensure that our two mouse pads are not on
the zipper but in fact are right up to that seam so what we could do is just finagle it and know
that we are right there laying flat in between these two areas so once we're all set there
and we have our mouse pads now under that print area we're gonna have to go ahead and adjust our
pressure and back it off so we have our regular medium to firm pressure with our goof proof
screen printed transfers there we're a little tight to lock down so i'll back this way off
now that we're at a six on pressure we're all set and good to go
now just like last time we could take our transfer and i've already creased it at the top and bottom
like we did on that last application but instead of lining that up to the middle of the seam we're
actually going to cut it right down the middle of the transfer and do a split front application here
now we're going to completely avoid any of these seams so we're gonna be printing right up to them
so all we have to do is take our scissors and the little grid lines on the back here
of our goof proof screen printed transfers make it super easy to just see exactly what
line you need to cut down and then cut nice and smooth carefully write down that one
straight line on there so we don't have a little wiggly print and we're ensuring that each edge
is on the mouse pad completely we'll go ahead and press this for our standard application
goof proof is a hot peel so we'll peel the carrier away immediately here
for our next application here since we've already covered that full front how do you do a left chest
well very similar to how we did that last one but just raising the area with the mouse pad but
if you have a hotronix press here there is a cool platen that you could swap out and easily achieve
any of these uh kind of non-standard placements or say if you're just doing left chests on polos
or hoodies just like we're going to be doing that you could use one of these smaller platens
as well this is the 8x10 and what we could do is just grab our hoodie here we'll unzip it and
just fit the area that we're going to be printing keeping any seams and collars off the printing
area and right there we could grab our left chest print align it right to where we want it
looking at where the sleeve is we're nice and centered right about right here
and we can press this and that would be a great left chest print now if you don't have a heat
press with interchangeable platens or have the budget for any of these interchangeable platens
that's okay if you're not doing a ton of work doing these left chest placements on the polos or
t-shirts or anything like that you don't need one of these and we could go back to those super cheap
inexpensive mouse pads so we'll swap our platen back in here back to the full size platen to
emulate that fixed platen that you may have on your heat press and we'll go ahead and grab our
hoodie right here now what we could do for this one is do the same thing where we just zip it
up load it right on like a pillow case and then just take our mouse pad to raise the printing area
underneath or if you don't have a fully threadable heat press you could lay it
directly over top so you'd have that extra layer of fabric right underneath this mouse pad as well
now what you're going to be aiming to do is get a nice firm even pressure area right here
we'll zip this one back up and ensure that this is in the correct placement
so all we're going to do is just trace the seam where the hood meets this shoulder and trace it
all the way down and that's going to be our center line and then we could do about four
fingers down from the bottom of the collar so our graphic is going to be right here now
one thing you could do is on hoodies you don't want to be farther outside of this pocket area
so this is another method you could use to kind of look and see where that is and if you're past
this area and your center line's here you're probably going to be printing too far over into
the armpit so just keep it by the hood seam where the shoulder comes down tracing that line straight
down you see we're about an inch inside there and once we're all set we'll take our graphic
trace the line straight down and we're going to place it right on the middle there
and we'll go about four fingers down from the collar to the top of the graphic
so just about right there double checking that placement straight down
and now we're ready to press so we'll go ahead and press this shirt
our goof-proof screen printed transfers of course are a hot peel so we'll peel the carrier away
immediately leaving us with an awesome durable and flexible screen printed hoodie so all we do here
just the same will remove the mouse pad toss it aside zip back up our hoodie and admire our work
but we're not done the back of this hoodie needs a print as well we're going to be putting this
graphic here onto the back of the hoodie we want to ensure that the hood is not completely covering
it and you can see it when it is worn down now we'll go ahead and grab our hoodie and thread it
right back onto the heat press now printing on the back of hoodies with a non-threadable heat press
is a little bit of a challenge because you do need to make sure that if you're just laying over top
on your platen that all of these seams that are on the bottom i'm talking that bottom pocket seam
is off of the platen because if you're printing over that in any way or printing over the zipper
on the inside you're going to see that in the print when you press it so typically on
like a front we do three fingers but with our hood worn down it's gonna cover the graphic
a little too much so what we're gonna do is we're gonna go down about five and maybe six
inches down from the collar so we could do a little four fingers and a two finger
or something like that six fingers seven fingers somewhere in that area once we're happy with that
placement that five inches down from where the seam meets the hood we'll just go ahead and press
and of course a hot peel
gives us an incredible looking screen print and when i pull this off of our press and hold it up
you're like wow that looks maybe a little bit too low i'm going to pull a mannequin in here
we'll throw this hoodie on a mannequin and show you that with the hood down that it looks just
right so as you can see we absolutely nailed that left chest placement using just the seam
up here in the shoulder for the guide and four fingers down from where the collar is right here
and then on the back even with the hood down it's just covering a little bit of the graphic it looks
very natural and an awesome print location that you could achieve super easily
do you have any zip up hoodie printing tips of your own
share it with us down in the comments section below we love to hear how you guys are doing
now be sure to subscribe to our transfer express youtube channel we're always dropping new videos
to help you and your t-shirt business but until next time i'm dave happy pressing
you