American Apparel (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Even though it is not featured on our core custom clothing catalogue, Indigo has a wholesale account with American Apparel in London and can print on a majority of their products which are flown direct from Los Angeles, California to our DTG or screen printing factories here in the UK. Of course these means lead times are a little longer than normal (approx. 2-3 weeks once order is placed and paid for).

If you are interested in this brand, also check out Continental Clothing, which offers a similar range but is supplied out of the UK (and so has sorter lead times and lower prices).

You can get a quote for any brand you are interested in by filling out our simple quote form.

Epona, the brand that sells Fairtrade certified cotton clothing, now has a new online shop allowing you to buy blank samples online.

Indigo gets trade pricing from Epona and can screen print or embroider their ethical range with your design or logo.

We love their hoodies with the extra-thick draw-cords and also check out their Ambercrombie inspired sweatpants.

As well as Epona, check out the Okarma organic clothing range on our promotional clothing catalogue. The Continental Clothing Earth Positive range is also worth considering if ethics are high up on your purchasing agenda.

Follow this step-by-step tutorial to turn your latest design into an authentic looking vintage print.

The final design will be printed on a Brother GT-541 DTG (Direct To Garment) printer. Our artwork was created in Adobe Illustrator and sized to the largest dimensions possible for the DTG printer (350mm x 400mm). We used a Gildan Ultra Cotton Ice Grey t-shirt for this print as the muted colour helps to create an authentic vintage look.

Open artwork in Adobe Photoshop and ensure it is sized correctly. The DTG printer is capable of reproducing photographic quality work onto a garment, so ensure your artwork is created at 300dpi or higher for the best possible print.

Create a new layer and fill this white, Edit > Fill > White. Drop this below your artwork layer.

Make your own or get your hands on a few quality free grunge textures. For this tutorial I used 11 Free Hi-Res Light Grunge Textures from Fudgegraphics.com.

Open your grunge textures in Adobe Photoshop.

Image > Adjustments > Desaturate will turn each image b/w. Use Image > Adjustments > Curves to set a strong contrast in each texture.

Go to Select > Colour Range. Using the eyedropper cursor, click on an area of white in your texture. Play around with the Fuzziness slider until you are happy with your selection. Click OK.

Invert the selection you have just made. Select > Inverse.

Create a new layer above your artwork. Fill the selection with white, Edit > Fill > White.

Repeat the process with all of your grunge textures.

Play with the positioning of each grunge layer until you are happy with the distress. Layer > Flatten Image and save your graphic as a high quality jpeg.

With the artwork ready to print, we can move through to production. The printer I am using is calibrated for use with Adobe Illustrator and I already have a number of Illustrator templates set-up for various print locations and garment sizes.

Open the artwork and chosen template file in Adobe Illustrator. Copy the artwork into the template and position accordingly.

Send your design to print. We configured the DTG printer to use a low ink consumption to ensure we get the desired level of distress.

Pre-dry the garment on a heat press. Press for 10 seconds, allow to cool and check for moisture. Press for another 10 seconds if required.

Stretch your garment over the printing platen ensuring the garment is aligned correctly and all creases have been flattened out.

Hit the big green print button!

You can now find Indigo Clothing on Google+. Google+ launched its new ‘pages’ feature today which allows businesses and brands to have their own page on the new social network. This is very similar to the Facebook page system but it will be interesting to see how Google build this into the search engine.

Indigo Clothing

on Google+

Follow this step-by-step tutorial to create a quick t-shirt template in Adobe Photoshop.

A t-shirt template is great way to show off your latest designs. Use your template to experiment with different coloured garments and styles before going to print.

Photograph your chosen white t-shirt against a dark background. It is important that the garment is white so that we can make the image transparent later on.

Open your image in Adobe Photoshop. Desaturate your image to ensure it is black and white, Image > Adjustments > Desaturate.

Ensure that you have a good contrast between the dark and light areas, Image > Adjustments > Curves. Create a ‘S’ shaped curve. Play with these settings until you are happy.

Duplicate your photograph and delete the ‘Background’ copy. Name the new layer ‘T-Shirt Creases’.

Select the Pen Tool and ensure you have ‘Paths’ selected. Begin tracing along the edge of your t-shirt. Take your time, the more accurate you are, the better the final result. It is possible to use the Lasso Tool to make your selection, but this comes down to personal preference.

When you are done, right click and choose Make Selection…

Create a new layer above your photo and Edit > Fill your selection with a colour of your choice. Name this layer T-Shirt Colour.

Next we need to remove your t-shirt from its background. With the selection you made still visible choose Select > Inverse.

Then Select > Modify > Expand. Depending on the quality of your photograph choose between 1-5 pixels. For this image I expanded 2 pixels. Click Ok.

Then Select > Modify > Feather. Again, depending on your photograph feather between 1-5 pixels. For this image I feathered 1 pixel. Click Ok. With your photograph layer selected choose Edit > Cut.

Create a new layer below your t-shirt and Edit > Fill White. Name this layer Background.

Arrange your layers as above so that the T-Shirt Creases layer sits on top. With this layer selected, choose Multiply from the layers drop-down menu.

Double click your T-Shirt Colour layer and check the Colour Overlay box. Select the coloured box and choose your garment colour. Click Ok.

Open your latest t-shirt design, and drop this into your template. Place your design beneath the T-Shirt Creases layer and re-size accordingly. Go to File > Save As and name your template accordingly.

Group all layers and duplicate the group a number of times. You can now play around with various coloured garments on one art board.  The same process works for pretty much any garment!

You can buy this Die Monster Die t-shirt at our sister site Indigo2Go!

The week of Halloween spells the transformation of Frank into Frankenstein’s monster, Derek becoming Dracula, Vera, a Vampire, and Percy going Pumpkin. For one night only everyone tries their best to look as frightening as possible. As I’m not a fan of the seriously scary…even the thought of sitting through The Silence of the Lambs makes me want to reach for my Daddy’s hand and a hide behind a cushion, this Halloween, armed with a bag of cotton wool and some over-the-ear hooks, I will be attending a party in the guise of a giant beard. Scared? You would be.

Especially if you saw that I’ll be accessorising with a bubble-blowing pipe…magical. It is going to be a lot of effort creating this masterpiece of a costume, and it will be the pioneer of it’s kind (no beard before it has even been so large.) But if this Halloween you just can’t be bothered dressing up, or you don’t feel like scaring people too much (I like you) then get your hands on a t-shirt from choiceshirts.com. Put on your sweetest pout and prove that you’re simply “too cute for costumes”. Let’s make this Halloween about friendliness, not fiendishness, sorry Percy that Pumpkin’ll just have to wait till next year.

Maybe this shirt could be scary. Depends on who's wearing it

Indigo Clothing are proud to have brought and named our very own shade of purple in aid of Unicef’s Own a Colour campaign to raise money to help transform children’s lives. You can choose, buy and name your very own shade from 16.7 million colours!!!

As someone who studies the solid coated pantone book just in case BBC Mastermind call, it’s no surprise I love this idea! I browsed a few already purchased colours,  some of the individual descriptions included:

• a vivid aqua blue (not dissimilar to pantone 3125c!) which was matched to someone’s ‘favourite calm place in Cornwall’
• a garish blue, labelled as someone’s childhood bedroom colour
• a claret red, named after West Ham and red wine.

Yes, the last one was mine.

The website also has information on what colours are trending right now and a living scrapbook of images and ideas about different key season colours. You can also link your chosen colour directly to different social media outlets to help spread the word. So why not think of what a particular colour means to you and at the same time help a very worthy charitable cause.

So the countdown is over, the major stampede for first day shoppers wanting to grab opening day bargains is done! When Westfield’s Stratford opened its doors earlier this month, I was part of the group of people hugely excited about never having to trek across central London to Oxford Street again!

Whilst it is everything you would expect, an Americanised mall (sorry, I know its Australian!!), large space, big brands and huge stores, it contains names you would never have placed with ‘Stratford’. I grew up being dragged to the Stratford Centre for shopping trips with my mum. A damp run down old indoor market that smelt not dissimilar to a fish mongers! The biggest names in there included a Boots, but generally were the likes of Mark One fashion (think polyester dresses for a £5!), and the notorious ‘in shops’ consisting of indoor market stalls.

Although that’s a very old picture, and it has since been re developed, to see the opening of  brands such as Jamie Oliver, Searcy’s champagne bar, Armani jeans and Hugo boss is big news for the East end!

It’s exciting to be part of such a major change in the local area but also quite sad to think this could be the end of the Stratford centre.