CAT SWEATER / PRINT SURFACE

The Cat Sweater sample was rejected in its current form because of the print. In the digital file, the image could be judged as composition, scale and tone. On the garment, another condition appeared. The DTF-style result looked too much like a plastic layer: visibly separate from the textile and sitting too clearly on top of it.

This was not simply a question of whether the graphic itself worked. A print changes when it becomes a physical surface. Coverage, edge and opacity alter the way the fabric moves and the way the image belongs to the garment. Here, the transfer remained legible as its own material. Its edge announced where the image stopped and the sweater began. The cloth receded behind a sealed-looking patch when it needed to stay present through the image.

The sample was useful because it turned an impression into a specific decision. The desired direction is more interrupted: grainier, more halftone, with transparent areas and the garment allowed to show through. The intention is not to simulate damage for effect. It is to reduce the separation between graphic and textile.

No replacement process is recorded as resolved. Further tests are required, and the next physical result will need to be judged on the garment rather than predicted from the artwork alone. The file remains public because rejection is part of the development record: not a spectacle and not an apology, but evidence of the point at which a convincing screen image became the wrong physical object.