Custom Apparel Printing for Brands, Teams & Events

BizzyStitchn handles custom apparel printing for businesses, teams, schools, churches, events and anyone who needs a single shirt. We print with DTF, and screen print orders of 100+ pieces through our team, so the method fits your design, fabric and quantity instead of the other way around. There's no minimum and no setup fee on DTF, and screen setup is quoted once with your 100+ piece order. Pick a tee, hoodie, sweatshirt or hat, design it live in our 3D Custom Designer or request a bulk quote for 100+ pieces, then pick up at our Orlando-area warehouse or have it shipped across the US. Printing sits alongside embroidery and patches in our custom branded clothing lineup.

Types of Apparel Printing: Screen, DTF, DTG and Sublimation

Every print method puts ink on fabric differently, and that difference decides how the print feels, how long it lasts and what it costs. Here's the short version of each. The full explainers are one click away.

Screen printing

Ink is pushed through a fine mesh stencil, one screen per color, then heat-cured so it bonds to the fabric. It produces the boldest, most opaque color and the lowest per-piece cost on larger runs of the same design. The trade-off is setup: each color needs its own screen, which is why setup is charged once per color (we screen print orders of 100+ pieces). Read more about screen printing and its ink options.

DTF (direct to film)

Your full-color design is printed onto a clear PET film with a white backing layer, coated with a hot-melt adhesive powder, cured and then heat-pressed onto the garment. DTF works on cotton, polyester, blends, fleece and hats, handles gradients and fine detail, and has no setup fee. See how DTF printing works step by step.

DTG (direct to garment)

A specialized inkjet printer sprays water-based ink straight into the fibers of a pretreated cotton garment. The result is the softest full-color print you can get, which makes it ideal for photos, artwork and one-off personalized pieces. Like DTF, it needs no setup. We don't offer DTG; our DTF handles photos and one-offs instead. Learn more about DTG printing.

Sublimation and other heat-applied prints

Sublimation turns special dye into a gas that bonds permanently with polyester fibers, so the print has no feel at all. We don't offer sublimation, but it's worth knowing how it works. It's one of several heat-applied techniques; if you've heard terms like vinyl, plastisol transfers or iron-ons, our guide to the types of heat transfer printing explains how they differ.

Tees, Polos and Long Sleeves

T-shirts are the workhorse of printed apparel, and every one of these methods works on them. For a team or staff order of 100+ pieces with a one- to four-color logo, screen-printed ink on a 100% cotton or 50/50 tee gives you crisp, durable color at the best price per shirt. For full-color art in small or mixed-size quantities, DTF skips setup entirely.

Polos change the math. Many are polyester or poly-blend performance knits, which rules out DTG and makes screen printing trickier because polyester dye can bleed into the ink. A small DTF left-chest logo is the usual print choice; embroidery is the classic upgrade. Long sleeves add a placement most people forget: a sleeve print running down the forearm, which DTF handles well because the transfer is pressed rather than printed on a flat platen. Browse printed t-shirts and polos to choose your blank.

Hoodies and Sweatshirts Printed Front, Back and Sleeve

Fleece gives you more real estate than a tee: a full front, a full back, both sleeves and the hood itself. Each placement is printed separately, so planning matters. A 12-inch-wide front graphic on an adult hoodie reads well from across a room; a 3- to 4-inch left-chest logo looks more corporate; a back print is where event names, sponsor lists and team graphics usually go.

Hoodie fabric affects the method. Cotton-rich fleece (80/20 or 50/50) takes screen-printed plastisol and DTF beautifully, while DTG needs a high-cotton face to look sharp. The kangaroo pocket seam and zipper on full-zips also limit how large a front print can be, so tell us the style before we size your art. Shop printed hoodies or compare printed sweatshirts and crewnecks, which give you a smooth, uninterrupted front panel.

Hats, Beanies and Patches

Caps need a different approach because the front panel is curved and often structured with buckram. DTF is our go-to print for hats: the transfer is pressed with a curved hat platen and handles small text and multi-color logos without a stiff patch-like feel. Richardson trucker hats and dad hats take it well; bucket hats are embroidery only. See the full range of printed hats and caps.

Beanies are a different story. Knit fabric stretches and has deep texture, so a print rarely looks clean; a beanie almost always looks better embroidered. For a decorated look on knits, hats, jackets and bags without printing at all, consider our embroidered, PVC and leather patches. We don't print patches, because stitched, molded and leather patches outlast a printed one.

Small-Business Merch and Branded Prints That Sell

For a small brand, merchandise printing is mostly about tees, hoodies and hats that customers actually want to wear twice. Three things separate merch that sells from merch that sits in a box: a good blank (soft, well-cut, in a color your audience wears), a print method that matches the design, and the freedom to restock without ordering hundreds of units.

That last point is why no minimums matter. You can test a design with a handful of DTF pieces, see what sells at a pop-up or online, then move the winner to screen printing once your orders reach 100+ pieces and justify the one-time screens. If you're comparing apparel printers for a small business, ask the same questions you'd ask us: Are setup fees stated up front? Can I reorder ten pieces later? Do I approve the design before anything prints? Our answers are yes, yes and yes.

Branded merch for events works the same way. A conference, 5K or festival usually needs one strong design in a range of sizes, which is screen printing's sweet spot, plus a small batch of staff or volunteer shirts in a contrasting color.

Women's Fits, Kids' Sizes and Personalized Photo Prints

Women's and youth cuts print exactly like unisex garments; the difference is print size. A design sized for an adult XL tee can swallow a youth small, so youth and women's pieces often need a smaller print, with no added setup fee, and your mockup shows the placement before anything is printed. Fitted women's tees often have a narrower chest, which works best with a design no wider than about 10 inches.

Personalized pieces are where the digital methods earn their keep. A photo of a grandparent for a family reunion, a pet portrait on a birthday hoodie or a name on every shirt in a bachelorette group would be impractical with screens, but DTF prints each piece differently at no extra setup cost. For photos, a sharp original at 300 DPI at print size makes the biggest difference. We don't carry clothes for pets, but a pet portrait on your own tee or hoodie gets the dog into the family photo.

All-Over and Sublimation Print Options

Sublimation is the method behind those edge-to-edge prints on athletic jerseys and performance tees. Because the dye bonds inside polyester fibers rather than sitting on top, the print won't crack, peel or add weight, and it breathes like the fabric itself. That's a real advantage at an outdoor Orlando event in July.

The rules are strict, though. Sublimation needs a high-polyester garment, ideally 100%, and a white or very light base color, because the dye is transparent and there's no white ink. It can't print on cotton or dark shirts. On a finished garment, seams, collars and underarm folds can leave small unprinted streaks, which is why true all-over designs are often printed on fabric panels before sewing. We don't offer sublimation or all-over printing right now; for full color on polyester, our DTF prints are the practical choice.

Which Method Fits Your Quantity, Colors and Fabric?

Most orders sort themselves out with four questions: how many pieces, how many colors, what fabric, and how you want it to feel. This table is the quick version.

Factor	Screen printing	DTF	DTG	Sublimation
Best quantity	Larger runs of one design	1 to a few hundred	1 to small runs	1 to large runs
Colors	Best with 1-6 spot colors	Unlimited, incl. gradients	Unlimited, incl. photos	Unlimited, no white
Fabrics	Cotton, blends, fleece	Cotton, poly, blends, fleece, hats	Cotton and high-cotton blends	Light polyester only
Feel	Thin ink layer (plastisol) or soft (water-based)	Smooth film on top of fabric	Very soft, in the fibers	No feel at all
Durability	Excellent	Very good	Good to very good	Permanent dye
Setup fee	Quoted with 100+ piece orders	None	None	Not offered by us
Best for	Team, staff and event bulk orders	Hats, polyester, mixed sizes	Photos, art, one-offs	Jerseys, performance wear

When two digital methods could both work, the DTG vs DTF comparison goes deeper on feel, washing and cost. For bulk orders where screens are on the table, our guide to screen printing vs digital printing shows where the one-time setup starts paying for itself.

Ink or Thread? When Embroidery Beats a Print

Printing wins on detail, color count, large graphics and photos. Embroidery wins on perceived value and longevity in a few specific places: polos, structured caps, beanies, jackets and anything worn by staff who face customers. A stitched left-chest logo reads as uniform; the same logo printed reads as event shirt.

Embroidery has a one-time $35 digitizing fee per design, once it's paid you can download the digitized file from your account, and reorders of the same design skip the fee. Fine text under about a quarter inch tall, gradients and photographic detail don't translate to thread, which is when a print makes more sense. If your logo needs to appear on both a tee and a cap, a common split is a printed tee with an embroidered hat. Compare the options on our custom embroidery page.

Upload Custom Artwork Online or Request a Bulk Quote

You can design it in our 3D Custom Designer or send us what you have for a bulk quote (100+ pieces). The cleaner your file, the closer the print matches your screen.

• Best for any method: vector SVG or PDF files with outlined fonts. They scale to any size without blurring. AI and EPS files upload in our 3D Custom Designer too.
• For DTF: a PNG with a transparent background at 300 DPI at the actual print size, so a 12-inch-wide front print needs roughly 3,600 pixels across.
• For screen printing: spot colors (or Pantone references if you need an exact brand match) and no more colors than the design really needs, since each one is a screen.
• Avoid: screenshots, logos pulled from social media and semi-transparent effects like glows and soft shadows. On dark garments those can print as a speckled halo.

Not sure your file is print-ready? Send it anyway. We'll tell you what will and won't work before anything is printed.

Proof, Print and Ship: Orlando-Area Pickup and US Delivery

Every order follows the same path. You choose a garment and a design and approve its placement, size and colors in our 3D Custom Designer at checkout, so plain DTF orders don't need a separate proof. Nothing prints until you approve it. After printing and curing, your order is packed and shipped, or held for pickup.

Customers across the Orlando metro, from Kissimmee to Lake Mary and Apopka to Oviedo, can pick up at our Orlando-area warehouse; we confirm a pickup time when the order is ready. We also ship anywhere in the US. Print orders placed by 2 pm Eastern on a business day ship in 1–2 business days, and orders placed after 2 pm ship in 2–3 business days; orders with art clean-up count from proof approval, and screen-print orders of 100+ pieces are scheduled by our team. Tell us your in-hand date up front and we'll confirm it before you approve. Rush orders are available, with the rush fee quoted with your order.

Frequently Asked Questions

What types of apparel printing do you offer?

We offer DTF (direct to film) printing, screen printing for orders of 100+ pieces through our team, and embroidery when thread suits the job better than ink; we don't offer DTG or sublimation. Our custom apparel printing covers tees, polos, long sleeves, hoodies, sweatshirts and hats. Each method suits different quantities, fabrics and designs, and we'll recommend the right one for your order when you request a mockup.

Is there a minimum order for custom printed clothing?

No. You can order a single DTF-printed piece. For one-offs and small runs, DTF is usually the most economical because it has no setup fee. Screen printing starts at 100 pieces of the same design, with its one-time per-color setup quoted with your order.

How much does custom clothing printing cost?

Price per piece depends on the garment, quantity, print method, number of print locations, design size and, for screen printing, the number of colors. Setup fees are simple: none for DTF, and a per-color setup for screen printing (100+ pieces), charged once per design, so reorders skip it. Larger quantities lower the per-piece cost, especially with screens. Request a bulk quote for 100+ pieces to get exact pricing and a free mockup.

Which printing method lasts the longest?

Sublimation is the most permanent because the dye becomes part of the polyester fiber, so there's nothing to crack or peel. Among methods for cotton, a properly cured screen print is the most durable and can outlast the shirt itself. DTF is very durable too. DTG holds up well with gentle washing but can gradually soften in color.

Can you print on hats, hoodies and patches, not just t-shirts?

Yes for hats and hoodies. We print caps with DTF (bucket hats are embroidery only), and hoodies with DTF or, on 100+ pieces, screen printing, depending on the design and fabric. We don't print patches, though. Our patches include embroidered, PVC and leather styles, and they work well on hats, jackets and bags alongside your printed apparel.

Can I design and order printed apparel online?

Yes. You can design it in our 3D Custom Designer with your own artwork, or request a bulk quote for 100+ pieces and let us lay it out on a free mockup. Either way, you'll see your design with placement, size and colors before anything is printed. Vector files or 300 DPI PNGs give the best results, but we'll review whatever you have.

Do you print one-off personalized pieces as well as bulk orders?

Yes. With no minimums, a single personalized gift with a name or photo is just as welcome as a few hundred branded staff shirts. One-offs usually go to DTF, which has no setup fee. Bulk orders of 100+ pieces of one design often go to screen printing, and we can add individual names to a bulk order too.