Mafro wrote:Green Gecko wrote:The worst thing with importing tees is sometimes the handling charge alone works out more than the tax you owed. Happened to me with Threadless.
Of course now I just put whatever I want on a t shirt. It's nice to get a licensed screenprint occasionally but the quality of my own tees is usually better to wear lol
I had an M&S suit once. I got one when I was 16 for a prom. I threw up over it within a year and never wore the trousers again but I did wear the jacket until that disappeared somewhere.
I used to wear jackets all the time but I haven't done so for years. Kind of replaced if with a waistcoat from white stuff. I might change back again since I have so many dinner shirts and can make innoffensive tees to go with them.
You'll know this. What is the specific type of material that seems to be used in a lot of American t-shirts? I've got two free ones from Digital Ocean and an NHL one that are made of the same type of stuff, it's soft and comfy as strawberry float and the colour is always a sort of marbled effect. Never seem to see the same stuff over here.
It's a bit tough to say. Here are some suggestions:
Triblend. It's a mixture of cotton, polyester and rayon. Increasingly fashionable for its soft feel, nice stretch, rebound and hang and easy care nature and more dynamic look. American Apparel seemed to do it quite a while ago.
"Marled/heather" - typically a blend of cotton and polyester (polycotton), differently dyed fibres to create a vintage, worn look from 2 colours. Pretty much just describes what you get above with tri-blend but "marled" can mean more streaky and you have to look at the fabric composition to find out potentially why. You know those speckly grey sports shirts, like white noise? That's a heather blend. It's usually 50:50 polycotton blend because polyester dries faster while cotton is warm and soft. You could also combine single threads of different sizes.
Combed and/or ringpsun - a method of softening T-shirts which while the former slightly reduces the life of the garment, makes it really soft to touch from the shelf. It might make the print fuzzy so it needs to be combined with a good stitch density to get a quality T. The threads are "ringspun" together to tighten them and then "combed" to sort of "fuzz" them up and take out any impurities
(Bear in mind that image comes from a manufacturer so that is pretty biased - carded cotton can be soft as well if it isn't spun that badly and the stitch density is good.)
French Terry - a stitch where tiny loops are pulled through or soft piles of yarn created on one side to give it a luxury, squishy sort of fleece-like feel (without being fleece, which is generally polyester). More typical on pullovers than shirts. I
think these loops are created by "
Ghiordes or Senneh knots" but I'm way deeper than I need to be now.
Jersey knit - your standard >>>>> shape stitches usually running from top to bottom of shirt that gives it a slight stretch - about 95% of shirts are stitched this way
Ribknit - Is what it sounds like. Stretchy and I guess has less contact with skin so can seem softer but also rubs if its a carded or course spun thread
Combine some of those together and you'll probably get what you want? But what Chocolate-Milk says has me intrigued..
Generally how soft your garment is, is a mixture of weight (grammage measured in Oz2 or gsm2), stitch density (how thick each "single" thread is determined by how many fibres are included per thread, for example 32 fibres twisted together is pretty good, 18-20 is standard cheap shirt) and it can be "single face" which means flat on one side and piled on the inside - so softer inside than outside), pre-softening treatment and generally the quality of the cotton and how it has been dyed, dried and treated at the factory, before or after its assembled.
Edit: I've found something else I've never heard of being used in traditional T-shirts before, Boucle - "A knit or woven fabric with small curls or loops that create a nubby surface. The fabric has a looped, knotted surface."
If the manufacturer does these kinds of techniques with a high stitch density it might look like a normal shirt but zoomed-in it's actually much more complex to get the different / comfier feel than you are used to with typical shirts.
Edit: Having found this, I'm pretty sure what you guys are talking about (and may not be the same thing) is a form of French Terry shirt but which also happens to be a marled/heather look by mixing separately died threads for a textured look. Very few brands are going to use that unless it's a £25+ tee or they're pushing huge volumes (like Uniclo).
For example American Apparel do one, my trade supplier is wanting £18.50 each
That said, American Apparel themselves are asking for £27.50 stateside so let me know if you want one lol
https://www.americanapparel.com/en/fren ... irt_tf402w