If you’ve ever noticed a shirt where the design looks just slightly angled, you’re not imagining it. This effect is called torquing, and it starts with how the fabric itself is made.
T-shirts are produced using a tubular knit process, where yarn is formed in a continuous loop. That process naturally creates a subtle twist in the fabric, similar to the spiral you see on a barber pole. When the garment is cut and sewn, that twist can cause the shirt to sit slightly off straight.
Because of this, a printed design may appear a bit tilted when worn. The key point is that the design is applied correctly, but the fabric itself is not perfectly straight, so the visual can shift slightly in real life.
A small amount of torquing is completely normal in knit apparel. In the industry, up to about 5% variation is considered within standard tolerance. Learn more about what's considered commercially acceptable. Beyond that, it may be treated as a quality issue, but slight variation is part of working with real fabric.
This is also why custom apparel is evaluated the way it’s actually worn, on a person, at a natural distance. If the shirt looks good in real life, it’s performing exactly as expected and backed by our quality guarantee.
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