Introduction
Cloth napkins are not common in the print-on-demand space, especially ones made of cotton. The few others I’ve seen have been polyester, which I don’t find a pleasant or effective fabric for the intended use.
So as a lover of linens, I had to try out a style I found on Gooten in the past year or two.
It’s a basic square that comes in two sizes:
- 10″ x 10″
- 22″ x 22″
The measurements represent the finished size before washing.
Designing for Square Napkins
This was probably one of the easier design templates to deal with since they are simple squares that you fill pretty much to the edge.
Gooten doesn’t provide a template file for this product, but they do give you sizing for the printable area if you start a product design:
- 10″ size: 1650 x 1650 pixels
- 22″ size: 3450 x 3450 pixels
You’ll notice that the above specifications give you a print area that is an inch larger than the finished size (at 150 dpi). This sizing accounts for the hem that goes around all four sides. Remember that fact as you do your designs: there’s about 75 pixels (0.5″) on each of the four sides that are actually part of the turned hem.
I made files in Photoshop to the above measurements and started designing.
Since color reproduction is something I focus on frequently when evaluating new POD products, I used a lot of colors, shades, and intensities within my various sample napkins. I also tried out several different graphic styles, including watercolor, vector, and vintage illustrations (the last being a bunch of images from Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass).
The underlying fabric is a soft white which will show through any spots where you don’t put any color. So keep that in mind as you put together your designs, especially if you save your files as PNGs instead of JPGs. You can use this show-through to your advantage as I did with this one experimental design:
I happened to save all my design files as PNGs and am pleased with the print job results from those files.
Fabric
The fabric in these napkins is 100% cotton twill weave – a style of fabric where you see diagonal ridges on the right side (like your denim jeans).
It’s a fine-weave twill that still has some body. As is typical with this type of fabric, the back (the reverse or wrong size) has a plain weave.
I found it softened nicely after just the first wash. Being cotton, however, they do wrinkle even with line drying. It’s not terrible, but something to keep in mind if you’re particular about having perfectly smooth napkins or hate ironing. Folding for storage will also produce creases, of course.
They feel really sturdy and as if they will last a long time.
Construction
You can see in the hems that the fabric is printed first then cut out and hemmed to size. The print job extends into the hems where they are folded to the back.
The POD supplier turned each hem 1/4″ twice, accounting for the extra 1″ in the print file. This means each edge was folded to the back 1/4″, pressed, folded again another 1/4″, and stitched down. So they took up 1/2″ in total up along each edge totaling the additional inch.
Performance
As I already mentioned, I was very pleased with the quality of the fabric. I was also pleasantly surprised with the print jobs – even the brighter and darker shades and including the finer details in the graphics. Printing on cotton can be tricky, especially with a textured surface such as this twill weave.
I have purchased a total of 14 samples over a period of time in as many different designs (I was testing a line of Alice in Wonderland images in different colors with some of these samples). The measurements in all of these samples have been very close to the advertised sizes upon receipt.
Care
My practice after getting a new sample is to then wash and dry according to the manufacturer’s label. In this case, that meant
- Machine wash in cold (mild detergent, no bleach)
- Line dry
By the way, by “line dry” I don’t mean a traditional clothes line. No space for one when you live in an apartment! I use an expandable, folding drying rack. Mine is years old – I think I got it at Target, maybe – but I found one on Amazon that is very similar (albeit a bit pricey). Here’s a model that’s seems a little lower in price.
I then also chose to iron the napkins – at least after the first wash. I’ve been actively using several of the samples to test wear after multiple washings and have not bothered to iron them every time.
Pro tip: there’s a big label in the hem on the back with all the required info that you can see in one of the photos above. It’s sort of plasticky. Make sure you remove that label before pressing! I made that mistake only once…
Results
After the wash/dry/iron, I measured again. While it has varied a bit from sample to sample, I usually found about 0.5″ in shrinkage along each axis. For cotton twill, I think that’s pretty good.
I have noticed some inconsistencies in construction. Specifically, sometimes the supplier printed the fabric slightly off-grain with the result the napkin is more of a slight trapezoid than a square. Others wound up more as rectangles than squares after washing, meaning they shrank more in one direction than the other.
But these variances were pretty minor overall. Some I noticed only because I had laid out them out on a grid mat (a kind used for sewing) while measuring.
The color stability of the print jobs has been pretty good. I’ve seen the most fading in a design where I used a lot of dark red, but red is notoriously prone to that problem. But even there, it’s held up well – just not as well as the others – after actual use and multiple washings.
Another sample where I used a bright pink background has seen a similar softening of the color. I think what’s happening is – because of the nature of the twill weave – the “valleys” of each ridge are more visible after washing. The print job doesn’t get all the way down into those valleys, and so they remain white.
The lighter colored samples show almost no degradation after use and washing. This result isn’t surprising to my mind since there’s less contrast between the white fabric and the design colors.
Conclusion
Overall, I’m very pleased with these cotton napkins. The minor variations in size and shape are the nature of any fabric product that includes hand finishing and are within acceptable variances.
The print quality is excellent, and most colors seem to have very good staying power through use and washing.
Fulfillment has taken about 7-8 calendar days from order placement to delivery within the USA. They shipped in a grey poly outer bag with each napkin in its own clear plastic bag.
The biggest issue from a business standpoint is the pricing model. The shipping, in particular, is rather high with limited discounts for multi-item orders. So you will definitely have to rely on good, unique designs to justify your customer pricing.
