Personalize your own viscose material using your photos and memories. Sharp detailing and rich colors give...
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Handmade
Viscose has a huge range of properties making it a versatile and popular fiber to work with.
Viscose is a very unique material. It is not a natural textile, neither is it completely man made. It is known as semi-synthetic, and is one of only a very few such fabrics. Viscose was the first artificial fiber to be created. It was made in the 1800's by French scientist Hilaire de Chardonnet. The British patent was taken out by scientists Edward John Bevan and Charles Frederick Cross, in the late 1800's. Viscose, also known as Rayon, was created as an artificial silk. A cheaper alternative which was somewhat easier to produce. Viscose is made from cellulose fiber, the main component in the wall of plants - wood pulp to be specific - which goes through a chemical process, dissolving this pulp with aqueous sodium hydroxide, with a presence of carbon disulphide. This is where the semi-synthetic categorization comes from. Although derived from a natural material, the creation of viscose is a chemical process. Other examples of semi-synthetic fabrics are seacell, which comes from seaweed, modal which comes most often from beech trees, and bamboo viscose which is made from bamboo grass.
We use digital printing methods on all of our fabrics. Dye sublimation techniques first print your design onto a sheet of transfer paper. Don't worry, we don't put a transfer onto your fabric. This specialist transfer paper bonds the eco-friendly inks deep into the fibers of your customized viscose material when heat is applied. This results in a beautiful, full-color HD print that will last for years to come. This leaves you with your printed viscose, with no transfer on the surface, giving you the original handle of the material, ready to use for your next home project or dressmaking venture. Due to the print process large areas of solid color may show minor blemishes or discoloration. This is to be expected and we would advise avoiding large solid blocks of color if possible.
There are a variety of finishing options when you order your customized viscose material. You can have your material cut on the line, which will remove any white edges that may appear around your printed design, or you can request it is sent to you as it comes, straight from the printer with those edges still there. If you would prefer our talented seamstresses can hem your printed viscose material for you. Available in either a folded hem or an overlock hem you can choose between black or white thread. Ensure to allow extra fabric when choosing your size, and add on a couple of days for the hemming to be done.
All of our fabrics are printed at 200dpi. This works for us as it combines a great quality as well as a good file weight. In order to avoid resizing and interpolation, we recommend that you scale your image to 100% at 200dpi. Our design interface works with a traffic light system that acts as a quality marker for your designs. This will show you whether the resolution is too low for printing. When you re-upload your design with a highest resolution, the traffic lights will change color, showing you're good to go. A message will pop up alongside the traffic lights to let you know if the resolution is too low or if you have a good quality image.
Your uploaded design will automatically be scaled to fit the size of fabric you've chosen. You can change the dimensions of your fabric by amending the measurements on the ‘Product Options’ tab, under ‘Print Size’. To see how this fits with the dimensions of your image/design, you can refer to the ‘Images & Text Tools’ tab under 'Quality Information'. Here, you will be able to edit the dimensions of the image.
We always recommend using an RGB color space when you upload your images. More specifically, we suggest using the sRGB image profile, to achieve best color results. This will need to be done in your editing software; choose RGB as the working space, and assign the image profile as sRGB (full name sRGB IEC61966-2.1)
There is no length limit for most of our fabrics. Our preview design window is set up to displaying a maximum of 10m (32.8 ft) to help you visualize the print, but that doesn't mean this is the print limit. If you'd like to order more, you can increase the quantity (x2 for 20m or x4 for 40m for example) and order as much as you'd like. Larger volumes will receive an automatic discount too. While the fabric length is nothing to worry about, each individual fabric will have a maximum width side: These can be found on the fabric's page information or in the design interface.
Yes, that will help you when it comes to cutting or framing your printed fabric. We recommend always adding a little extra space for borders into your purchased fabric size. When we print your materials, or send out fabric samples, we typically trim squarely around the fabric, leaving approximately 5mm white space. Cutting neatly on the line has an additional fee.
Crocking is the term used to describe fading along the creases in a fabric. It typically can occur after constant washing or heavy use of digitally printed natural fabrics. Crocking can be minimized by hand washing your fabrics at a cooler temperature, rather than machine washing. If you want to make sure there's no chance of crocking, we'd suggest you use a poly fabric.
Yes, our organic fabrics don't have an additional coating like non-organic fabrics have, which means it absorbs the inks deep into its fiber and reducing the color strength slightly (this can be approximately -40%). If you would like a bolder, more vibrant color for your fabric, we would suggest using a non-organic fabric.
Unfortunately not; all of our fabrics have been tested meticulously to ensure we know exactly how to get the best results, and our facilities cater perfectly to them. If you are set on a fabric we don't offer, we can offer custom printed sublimation paper to order which will allow you to heat press your designs onto your own fabrics.
If your design is simple and less intricate, a JPEG will be absolutely fine. However, if you have created a design with multi-colored detailing, we would recommend saving your design in a TIFF format.
Similar to other fabric printing processes, shrinkage can occur. The amount of shrinkage will depend on the fabric, but as a general rule of thumb, please allow for 2-8% shrinkage when working out your measurements. Shrinkage is not an exact science, and the amount of shrinkage will vary from print run to print run. We'd always suggest order a little more than you need for your project.
Many of the fabrics we offer are semi-transparent, so printing on both sides of the fabric is not a service we offer.
At the moment, all of our fabric labels are printed on satin fabric. For now, we believe this is the best choice, but will potentially introduce other options in the future. All labels are cut to the same label format. If you would like to choose a different fabric and format for your labels, you could always order a sheet of the fabric of your choice to create labels yourself.
Our fabrics are printed with water-based inks as environmental consciousness is always front of our minds. Water-based inks include no chemicals or solvents, and our printing process uses heat to fix colors and patterns into place to avoid excess or contaminated water returning into the water system (this is something that can occur through steaming). All printing, fulfilment and production is done in our one facility, and rather than rolling the fabrics or sending them in a tube, you will receive your material folded up. This amounts to 150 tubes saved a week, as well as much more space on the delivery van for more orders. (For delicate fabrics we ensure to package appropriately).
Although very rare, there could be a slight color difference from one print run to another. This is a normal part of the printing process, however we are always working to improve our color profiles. It is unlikely that the difference in print runs will be hugely different (for example, it's unlikely your orange is suddenly going to be red). The likelihood of color variations can be intensified fabric to fabric due to materials having different grains and textures; natural fabrics typically have more muted color tones, while poly alternatives have a bolder hue. This is because the construction of the material is different, and the printing method has to be altered slightly for more delicate, natural textiles.
Our full cut & sew service at Bags of Love can be used to your full advantage. We even offer hemming for your fabrics at a small additional cost. Our hems are created with a one or two cold hem that typically uses around 5 to 20mm of fabric (depending on the thickness of your chosen material). Please bare this in mind when you are ordering your printed fabric with hems: If you would like your finished piece to be 40" x 40", change your dimensions to 41" instead to allow space for your hems (you will also need to include additional for potential shrinkage). The thicker the fabric, the bigger the hem will be. Your printed fabric will be hemmed with either Black or White thread. If you are ordering a lightly woven material or a printed silk, you will find that one hem will be straight, while the other slightly rippled. The hemming material allowances are as follows and you need to make your print bigger to accommodate the hem:
For further information about our fabrics see our FAQs.
Please note: As everything we provide is handmade to order, you may find a slight variance in the sizes.
