Two of the driving forces behind every successful business are credibility and quality. The two, as with the many other factors of success, go handⁱ-in-hand though they are both equally individual. Quality—the creative, unique and professional products you produce—affects your credibility, how creative, unique and professional the services you offer are. And, to those who are painfully aware, it only takes one sub-quality product out of a million to ruin years of hard-earned credibility.

I prepared for this article on plastisol basics by considering all the rocket-science minutia relative to plastisol ink that make fact-hounds drool—precise details about the stages of curing, the exact physical and chemical behaviors, the composition of our most celebrated (and, conversely, damned) ink—and concluded that, for most printers, this approach would work out to about 1,500 words of bird-cage floor covering.

Screen reclaiming with an eye toward diminishing mesh haze, ghosts and stains? One heck of a demand! It can be done, though. This article is specifically aimed at plastisol ink use, but many of the points made are universal to any ink system used in our industry. Note also the word diminishing. Every ink system has the ability to create results that we could interpret as staining, ghosting and haze. It is a fact of the process and you will see it even with the best of procedures and chemicals, for there is no magic bullet. But as with all things, the selection of appropriate, high-quality products and proper application will go a long way toward minimizing haze, stains and ghosts.

In this brave new digital world, are there still places for old standby analog processes? Yes, the production of heat-applied graphics is alive and well! Heat transfers, as we call them, are still a viable way to decorate both garments and other textile products.

So why would anyone in his or her right their right mind want to decorate with a legacy process such as iron-on heat transfers when they can complete an entire garment using an inkjet printer in mere minutes? The fact that we’re dealing with that buttonless, collarless, round neck, pull-over garment commonly called the “basic T” offers much of the answer to this question:

Picture handfuls of mac-and-cheese squishing between fleshy fingers and completely missing mouth, milk cascading over lips and soaking into bib, bits of French-fry clinging to sprigs of newly-sprouted hair. It wasn’t the first time my nephew* Ayden attempted a self feeding, but it was the public performance of his life, to date.

All napkins down, we spectators contributed to the scene with red faces contorted by epidemic laughter. Mom paid how much for that shirt he just destroyed?!? Looking back, perhaps the question we should have been asking is: What made her choose that outfit as a worthy canvass of this type of specialty decorating in the first place?

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn.—EmbroideryFX will host four quarterly embroidery workshops in 2010 taught by Melanie Coakley, a 20-year embroidery and digitizing educator and veteran. These three-day workshops are designed for all embroiderer levels on any embroidery machine, will be held in a commercial-embroidery facility and include hands-on education on a range of topics, including hooping, quick fixes, production, needles, threads, stabilizers, how to take orders and more. For more information, contact EmbroideryFX at (423) 413-7514 or e-mail melanie@embroideryfx.com.

Walter Floriani KNOXVILLE, Tenn.—Floriani Commercial Products is now offering three-day educational workshops featuring respected names in embroidery titled “Weekend With Walt” for commercial embroiderers. The educator lineup includes Walter Floriani, well-known educator, writer and speaker and Melanie Coakley who has owned her own business for 19 years and is a consultant, educator and writer.