Sublimation + Embroidery = New Possibilities

I’ve been recently experimenting with combining dye sublimation techniques with machine embroidery in the hopes of taking my own patch-making abilities to the next level. This is an overview of my progress so far.

Materials

• A dye sublimation transfer with your design (either self-made or purchased online)
• Polyester fabric
• Large flat heat source, such as a heat press

Overview

First and foremost, you will need to obtain a sublimation transfer sheet with your design printed on it using dye sublimation inks. You can search online for a service that can print your designs for you. There are also purpose built dye sublimation printers that can produce these prints. The option I opted for is to modify a regular Epson inkjet printer to use sublimation dyes. The important thing to note is that this process will not work with regular inkjet inks. You will also need to source polyester fabric as your target fabric to transfer on to. 100% polyester will give you the best quality transfer but the fabric must have at a minimum of 65% polyester for this process to work.

Get your print ready

Remember to mirror your designs before having them printed, otherwise your design will be in reverse when you transfer it over to the target fabric. You’ll also notice that the colors on the sublimation transfer will appear dull or muted. That is expected, you will see its full vibrancy after the heating and transfer stage. In my test trial I will be transferring on to Poly Patch Twill. This is a polyester fabric that I normally use for all my machine embroidered patches.

Heat Transfer Stage

You’ll have to follow the dye sublimation instructions for your setup. The dye sub inks I am using recommend pressing the sheet over the fabric at 385F for 30 to 40 seconds. You may have to experiment a bit to dial-in your settings for the best dye transfer results.

You can see that the dye from the dye sublimation transfer has been partially removed and transferred onto the target polyester fabric.

This was a fun test and I’m happy with the initial results. I still need to dial-in settings so that the dye transfer gives more color-accurate results. This poly patch twill piece is ready to be embroidered on. The next piece of the puzzle will be to figure out a workflow that will give me repeatable alignment/registration between a dye sublimated piece and an embroidery design file on my embroidery machine.

Thank you for following along.
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