Designing Your Printed Labels

A big problem you will face with fabric label printing is the minimum run size for custom labels, especially full color custom tags for clothing. If you only need a small quantity of printed clothing labels for handmade items, they often start at 1000 or 5000 labels and will cost a small fortune. You won't need that many at the beginning so why put that much cash into stock? Your custom clothing tags may even change. You might find you need to edit the design or adjust the design and that will be a terrible loss if you make a bulk order. Best thing to do is to make custom brand labels in short runs, especially useful as personalized fabric labels for crafts, handmade and knitted items. Our minimum quantity is 1 pack and we can print as little as 10 labels hand prepared for you. This helps you get it right in the long run. Use us for trying things out and we will help build your brand. We sell our handmade custom labels for clothing in packs of 10, 20, 40, 100 & 200 labels (and we always add a few extras).

Our sizes include:

Label design tips

To achieve best results when you design your own custom fabric labels, keep your label design clean and bold. Do not use font sizes under 10pt and do not use lightweight or fine fonts. Always keep in mind the label size you are producing, for example, small labels only really have room for a logo. For care labels with lots of instruction text, choose a larger label. Make sure that everything fits and is legible. All of this can be done in our design page with the greatest of ease and our customer service team is always on hand to help. For great custom clothing brand labels layout, here are some useful tips.

Please note, we use a woven satin fabric, but your labels are printed on, not embroidered. This gives you the greater advantage of excellent color print, full brand logo and a better readability for small details.

Sizing For Hemming And Shrinkage

We have a full Cut & Sew service here at Contrado, and are able to hem your fabric prints for a small additional charge. We create a small one- or two-fold hem that typically uses 0.2" to 0.75" (5-20mm) of material, depending on the thickness of the fabric. So, for example, if you want a finished piece of fabric that measures 39.37" x 39.37", you will need to order a size of 39.96" x 39.96" to allow for the hem (on top of that please also allow for shrinkage of min 2%). The thicker the fabric, the bigger the hem will be. You can choose to have your prints hemmed with either Black or White thread. On our silk and other light woven fabrics, one hemmed edge will be straight (vertically down the roll) and the other will be slightly rippled. The hemming material allowances are as follows and you need to make your print bigger to accommodate the hem:

• Light Fabrics (0.59oz-2.95oz): For silks and other light fabrics, we use 0.24" - 0.32" / 6mm-8mm in the hem (2 fold), so overall width/height will be minus 0.48"-0.56""/ 12-16mm
• Medium Fabrics (2.98oz-5.90oz): For medium-weight fabrics that fray, we use 0.5 - 0.75" / 15-20mm in the hem (2 fold) so overall width/height will be minus 1.4" - 1.6" / 35-40mm
• Stiff/Heavy/No-fray fabrics: we use 0.5 - 0.75" / 15-20mm in the hem (1 fold) so overall width/height will be minus 1.5" / 35-40mm

All of these measurements are approximate and can vary. Including with shrinkage, it can mean a fairly significant difference to ordered dimensions, so please plan your print accordingly. Depending on how open the weave is, our fabric can shrink anywhere from 2% to 8% with the average being 2.5%.

How Would you Like the Edge?

• As it comes. We cut around your image, leaving a simply scissor cut, perhaps uneven white fabric border. 
• Hem with thread. We can hem your fabric with a choice of black or white thread. Please allow 1-2 days additional production time. See below for information on how hemming affects the size of your print. We offer an overlock hem, as well as a folded hem (one or two fold depending on the fabric) however not all fabrics are suited to both hem types. If you can see both options, it means both are suitable, and you will be able to choose whichever you prefer. 
• Cut on the line. We will cut neatly on the edge of your design. This means that if you have a border around your design we will cut around that border, if your design takes the whole space of the fabric, then we will neatly cut around the edge of that image. Please be aware, when we cut along the line, we have to cut against the grain of the fabric. This is the standard procedure for fabric cutting. This means that with some fabrics, for example, Georgette and Mulmul, which have a slight wave in them, some fraying will occur. This is unavoidable, as the cut follows the grain of the textile. 

All of our fabrics are cut manually by hand, with the utmost care and attention. If your fabric has a slightly uneven look on the edges or a touch of fraying, this does not indicate a flaw in the textile. It is not always possible to achieve a perfectly straight cut with certain fabrics, so please do bare this in mind when it comes to your design. If you have any queries or would like to know about our cutting methods in more detail, please get in touch and we will be more than happy to discuss them with you.

Please note: As we make everything by hand, all sizes may vary slightly.

For further information about our fabrics see our FAQs.

Is there only 1 option for the fabric label finish?

We have 2 options: 1. Folded: Has a closed edge and the cut edge is to be sewn in. If you need a folded label this is ideal. 2. Flat: Has heat sealed cut edges. The ends are meant to be folded as we don’t achieve a skin side finished edge, it’s just sealed to be non-fray. All the flat labels, or custom fabric tags, have + 0.4" seam allowance added to each side (on top of the stated fabric label size). You can sew flat with no fold, and probably best if you scissor cut our edge off, but there will be risk of fraying.

Can my all of my care instructions fit on a small label?

Small labels only have room for a logo. For care labels with lots of instruction text, we recommend opting for a larger customized fabric label. Take care in making sure that you have chosen the right size label, as scaling down the logo to fit can often make the text illegible.

Is there a minimum amount of labels you have to order?

10 is the minimum amount. Unlike many other sellers, we don't have high minimum order restrictions. The general order amount starts at 1000 labels, but not with Contrado! We offer minimums of 10 labels at a time. In addition to these versatile labels, we also offer swing tags. A tip to save time is to buy swing tags at the same time as buying your custom printed clothing labels, and reuse the design graphics in our system.