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Tenisha Hess, owner of Kill-A-Brew Kups, is a T-shirt making hobbyist who uses sublimation to create change the color of fabric.

Tenisha Hess, owner of Kill-A-Brew Kups, is a T-shirt making hobbyist who uses sublimation to create change the color of fabric.

Sublimation is a form of printing that is becoming increasingly popular because it is allowing ordinary people to achieve professional results.

Iron-on decals have been around as early as the 1960s, and by the early 2000s, computer software allowed users to be able to create their own T-shirts.

Over the years, heat transfer vinyl T-shirts have been popular because they could be made at home with an iron, but many would complain that the decals would peel off over time.

Sublimation, in recent years, is becoming more common because the ink adheres to the fabric better than vinyl. The process is also not out of reach of amateur shirt-makers.

Sublimation printers run between $600 and $700 on Amazon, and for those not wanting to pay that much, they can repurpose an old inkjet printer by purchasing empty ink cartridges and filling them with sublimation ink, which is available at different online distributors.

Tenisha Hess, owner of Kill-A-Brew Kups, considers herself a hobbyist who got into shirt-making so she could create T-shirts for her friends and family.

Those wanting to make a sublimation T-shirt will need a sublimation printer, a heat press, sublimation paper, and polyester T-shirts.

“They should be a high-end polyester blend, 65 percent or better,” said Hess. “The more polyester, the better it holds.”

After creating a design on computer software, such as Adobe Photoshop, CoreDRAW, DrawPlus, Clip Studio Paint, Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Designer, or Sketch, users must first print their design onto the sublimation paper.

After the illustration has been printed, it can be cut and laid out onto the part of the T-shirt where the user wants it to stay. They can then place the T-shirt onto the heat press, flatten it out with their hands, place on the sublimation cutout wherever they wish, add a cover sheet, and pull down the heat press for about 45-60 seconds at 400 degrees.

After the sublimation ink has been heated, it adheres to the T-shirt, and the user can immediately wear it. Heat presses can be ordered online on different websites, such as Amazon, for $160-300.

Hess started making T-shirts because she was interested in working with her hands.

“We have three boys active in sports. When I”m not chauffeuring them around, then I try to tinker with that type of stuff,” she said.

She is using her talent to make T-shirts for her child’s baseball team.

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