Printed Hoodie

Printed Before Cutting

All-over printing puts the design onto the roll of cloth, which is then cut into pattern pieces and sewn. Because the cutter takes pieces from wherever they fall on the roll, the pattern lands differently on every garment made, and the design continues over the shoulder, down the sleeve and across the hood.

The signature to look for is continuity at a seam. If the color runs on across the shoulder join without interruption, the cloth was printed first. It also means no two are identical, which is a genuine feature and occasionally a surprise if you were expecting the exact placement in the listing photograph.

Printed After Assembly

• The design has to sit on a flat panel. A finished hoodie can only be printed where it can be laid flat, which is the chest above the pocket and the upper back.
• The pocket is a hard boundary. A pouch pocket is a double layer with two seams, so nothing can be printed across it. This is why placed designs on hoodies always stop higher than they would on a t-shirt.
• The hood seam is the other boundary. Print cannot run up into the hood, so a placed design is framed by the neckline whether or not that suits it.

What This Means When You Are Choosing

A slogan or a graphic almost has to be a placed print, because text needs to sit square and unbroken. An abstract or photographic design is better served by all-over printing, which is why the two categories look so different from each other rather than by fashion.

It also affects hand. A placed print is a layer sitting on the surface and you can feel it; an all-over print is in the cloth and you cannot. On a hoodie this matters less than on a t-shirt, since the printed area is rarely against skin, but it is the reason a heavily printed chest panel can feel stiffer than the rest of the garment.

Washing Either Kind

An all-over print needs nothing special, because the color is in the cloth and there is no layer to protect. A placed print is a surface layer and wears through abrasion, so turning the hoodie inside out before washing is worth doing and costs nothing.

Neither should go through a hot dryer. Heat is hard on a placed print and hard on the brushed inner face of the garment, and a hoodie air dries perfectly well given a day.

The Garment Underneath The Print

Whichever process was used, the hoodie itself is usually a fleece backed knit, and the weight of that cloth decides warmth and how the printed area drapes. A heavier fleece carries a large design without letting it pull; a light one lets a stiff placed print sit slightly proud of the surface. If the hoodie is being bought as a unisex layer over other clothes, the weight matters more than the print does.

Between the two, weight is also the harder thing to change your mind about. A print you tire of stays wearable under a jacket; a hoodie that is too heavy for the room you are in does not get worn at all.