Anyone know where I went wrong on this sublimation print? The heat press bleached/lightened a rectangle area around the print and there’s mirror image bleach effect on the back. Fabric is 95% polyester and 5% spandex, heat was set to 400 f and time 40 seconds.
I also did 65% polyester and 35% cotton t-shirts on the same settings but didn’t have this problem
Best practice for fabrics is to put a piece of parchemnt paper between layers (inside the shirt in this case) to stop bleedthrough.
I’m guessing the spandex was the pain point here. Discoloration like what you showed generally happens when the substrate is overheated. Spandex is quite heat sensitive, so following the normal polysester setting here was most likely just too much heat for too long. If you try again with the same blend I would recommend trying to drop the heat to 375 and try a 30-35 second press.
(I haven’t personally used a spandex blend, but I’ve used the lower heat/time method to work with other heat-sensitive fibers with good results.)
