Garment dyeing is a technique that creates a super-soft and vintage feel that is already broken-in. It’s the process of dyeing white garments (or in our case, t-shirts) AFTER they have been sewn and constructed. A majority of clothes get their color from dyed rolls of fabric.
Our 5,000-square-foot dye house, near downtown Burlington, NC, has 5-sample and 9-production paddle dye tubs. These paddle dye machines, built in the 1960s, were used by Kayser-Roth to dye socks made in the same building.
This system is great for inventory control because we only have to stock white t-shirts. Garment dyeing gives us the flexibility to respond to real demand by allowing our customers to choose color at the last stage of the ordering process.
Teaser: Dye House of the Future
A few years ago, we identified the ColorBox. This garment dyeing equipment by Jeanologia is the most advanced garment dyeing technology available today.
Although our current dye house has served us well, this new, more modern version of dyeing apparel is less labor-intensive and conserves valuable resources like water, energy and CO2.
We recently received our first sample version of the ColorBox to begin validating its effectiveness. This marks the first step toward building a larger, more advanced dye house, positioning us to compete in an industry still ruled by overseas manufacturing.
Beyond efficiency, this machine gives us greater control over dye results and supports our mission to make natural dyes a viable alternative in a marketplace dominated by overseas, synthetic, fossil-fuel-based dyes.
For instance, we are currently testing a batch of natural dye made from Marigolds grown in our on-site dye garden!
We believe garment dyeing is a powerful path forward for manufacturing in the USA. Not only does it produce beautiful depth of colors on apparel, but it also gives customers greater flexibility by allowing color to be chosen later in the process. With this approach, we are proving that clothing made domestically with natural fibers can successfully compete in the global apparel industry.
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TS Designs is a t-shirt manufacturer that produces the highest quality printed apparel through a domestic, transparent, and trackable supply chain. We use only natural fibers & earth friendly printing, always grown and made in the USA.