Identifying The Quality Of Digitally Printed Silk
This may sound obvious, but people genuinely do fall into this trap. Digital printing technology allows patterns to be applied to various materials-including polyester, rayon, and, of course, genuine silk. Overseas consumers often assume that "if it feels silky-smooth, it must be silk"; however, this is not always the case.
One of the easiest tests to use for silk identification is to burn a couple of loose threads (if you don't mind losing a small piece of the fabric). When silk is burned it has a very distinctive smell (like burning hair) and when you crush the ash produced, it crumbles easily into powder. When polyester is burned, it also creates black smoke and the resulting residue will form large solid lumps. Another major difference is the feel (how it feels) of the material; when you first pick up real silk it feels cold, but within a couple of seconds it warms up. On the other hand, while rayon has a smooth feel, it will remain cooler than real silk for a much longer period of time and is subject to be ripped more easily when it gets wet.
Step Two: Examine the precision of the print.
Digital printing's main benefit is really the ability to make very complicated designs as well as natural, smooth color change. But, if the machines or the industrial processes are not up to the mark, the defects will be quite visible.
Examine the fabric closely: high-quality digital prints will have crisp, sharp-edged designs, even for the thinnest lines or smallest text-and all of the contours of your design will be clearly defined and distinguishable from one another. On the other hand, a fuzzy, blotchy, or "bled out" edge to the pattern indicates either a lack of precision in the print head or a problem with the steaming (colour-fixing) process of the design.
There's a detail that a lot of people miss, though: they don't check for a "grainy" texture on the lighter-colored areas of the fabric. The coloration of a high-grade print will be so uniform that it looks like a watercolor painting. On the contrary, a bad-quality print will display a heavy presence of minuscule color dots in the lighter areas, which is reminiscent of the old-fashioned printer's unblended ink dots. This flaw generally results from ink formulation problems or insufficient pre-treatment of the raw fabric.
Step Three: Check the reverse side for cleanliness.
When you see a Silk digitally printed, usually the design is printed only on the outside surface. Check the reverse part of the fabric. You should have no color bleeding from the front side (design) to the back side (white/base color) of the fabric if it is a high-quality print. The lack of bleeding is not due to ink not being able to penetrate the fabric, but rather that there was precise control in the manufacturing process to achieve this result.
Whenever there are multiple colors on the back of a piece of fabric, it indicates either too much ink was used or there were other problems in the colour fixing process. This type of fabric also may irritate the person wearing it due to the back of the fabric rubbing against their skin when the shirt or other clothing item is worn. This indicates that too much ink was used, therefore wasting the ink; this indicates that the supplier gave more importance to getting products out the door than to quality.
Step Four: Test for color fastness.
This is the most practical consideration. Many buyers complain that their silk garments lose color after just one wash; this is a direct result of poor color fastness.
You can do an easy way to test. Pick up a square/rectangle of white cotton or paper towel and rub it hard across the printed surface several times without water on it. Then, look at the piece of cloth to see how much color you've transferred from the printed surface to the white cloth. High-quality silk should not transfer much, with almost undetectable amount of color being transferred. If you get noticeable amounts of color, you may have excess dye that can transfer to your skin or undergarment due to the fabric, such as on the collar and cuffs.
The water-wash test is an even more direct way of determining the level of robustness of the fabric. To complete this test you should wash the fabric a few times in warm water (40 °C), using a neutral detergent. A high-quality digitally printed silk will remain brilliant to the eye after 3 or more washes and will lose very little surface colour while a poor quality fabric will look 'washed out' or 'grayed' after just 1 wash, as if the fabric has been covered with haze.
Step Five: Assess the handfeel and drape.
After digital printing, silk undergoes washing and heat-setting processes. Fabrics produced by reputable manufacturers exhibit very little change in texture before and after printing; they remain soft and retain their natural drape. Fabrics produced using inferior techniques, however, often feel stiff-particularly in areas with large pattern coverage-and may have a slightly coarse, rubbery texture reminiscent of offset printing. This occurs because too much ink was used without adequate post-washing treatment, causing residual agents to bind the silk fibers together.
Another issue to watch for is excessive "slipperiness"-not the natural smooth glide of genuine silk, but a slick, wax-like coating. This may indicate that too much fabric softener was added to mask defects in the base fabric.
