Scrub Your Dishes With Custom Kitchen Towels
One of the easiest ways to personalize anyone’s kitchen is by applying yours or another’s image onto SubliCraft kitchen towels. Available in 11 by 18 inch and 15-and-seven-tenth by 23-and-three-fifth inch sizes, these are sizable polyester towels of a familiar waffle style, ready to clean up any messy kitchen work. And by fully consisting of 100-percent white polyester, these can easily hold anyone’s favorite photos or graphics on both of its sides with no problem through sublimation. Whether as branded tools for a restaurant, or fun gifts to friends and family, customizing SubliCraft’s kitchen towels is sure to be a simple delight for anyone with the tools ready.
First, you’ll need to scale your image to fit within the size of your SubliCraft kitchen towel. If aiming for a full bleed print, you can fit it within a size that’s a quarter inch larger than the base size of the towel. This will ultimately help prevent the image from clipping as you position the printed image and towel together upon pressing. When using graphic design software like Adobe Illustrator, this can be prepared as a clipping mask rectangle for your imported image. And by creating another rectangle at the base size in 50-percent opacity, preparing key parts of image to the towel is only easier.
Though due to the large sizes of SubliCraft kitchen towels, you’ll need to print your full bleed images with a sublimation printer that supports at least 13 by 19 inch paper. However, you can alternatively apply isolated images like logos with smaller paper to these towels. But as soon as you're ready, you may print your image through your sublimation paper. Sawgrass SG1000 users must first install the bypass tray to the back of the printer, then send the image to Sawgrass Print Manager with these settings: Substrate to Polyester, paper to the loaded paper’s profile, Source to Bypass Tray, leave Mirror checked, and the Color Mode in the Color tab to Photographic or Vivid based on one’s preferred level of color saturation.
Once the transfer has been printed, turn on your heat press and set it to 45 seconds at 385 degrees Fahrenheit with medium pressure. With your machine at temperature, cover its lower platen with parchment paper, then add your transfer on top with the image side up. Next, place your SubliCraft kitchen towel on top with one side facing toward the printed image. While the waffle style may appear to pose a potential surface issue down the line, the towel will further be flattened not only through pressing it, but in addition to heat taping it tightly, or fully attaching it via sublimation spray to the transfer.
But assuming your SubliCraft kitchen towel is ready, flip it with the paper side facing up, cover it with another parchment paper sheet and press. After 45 seconds, open your machine and allow the towel to cool down for at least 20 seconds. Once cooled, quickly peel the towel or transfer off and it’s now permanently displaying your custom image thanks to sublimation. And even after pressing the towel, its waffle style surface will still spring up cleanly! Once it’s completely cooled, you can also press the towel’s back side with the same or different design for full customization. For more details on SubliCraft blanks and other tools and supplies, feel free to check out our YouTube channel, or visit our website at HeatPressNation.com.
