Pick Better Blanks: 4 Questions for Printers — Side-Seam or Tubular
Oct 01, 2026
Side seamed tees are the stronger pick for fit, print accuracy, and long-term value, and this guide from Brass & Bunker Co lays out exactly why. Tubular construction still earns its place on basic runs and budget blanks where cost matters more than a tailored drape. The rest of this piece walks through the fit mechanics, the printing tradeoffs, and the finishing details that separate a shirt built to last from one built to sell cheap.
TL;DR:
- Side seamed shirts provide better shaping and fit for true-to-size and workwear apparel, while tubular shirts are cheaper but have a boxy silhouette.
- Proper finishing details like double-needle stitching, taped seams, and coverstitch hems significantly improve durability and washability over time.
- Side seams enable faster, more precise printing alignment and reduce misregistration or spirality during multi-color or large-format designs.
- Repeated washing worsens spirality and fit issues, so selecting garments with reinforced finishing and testing samples through multiple washes is essential.
- When choosing blanks, consider budget, printing method, fit expectations, and wash durability, asking suppliers for detailed construction and wash-tested samples.
Table of Contents
- What Side Seamed and Tubular Construction Actually Mean
- How Side Seams Shape a Tee Differently Than Tubular Cuts
- Construction Tradeoffs Between Cost and Finishing Quality
- Printing Implications: Alignment, Registration, and Spirality
- What Happens to Fit and Print After Repeated Washing
- A Quick Checklist for Choosing the Right Blank
- Brass & Bunker Co’s Shop-Floor Approach to Construction
- Why Construction Decisions Reflect a Bigger Commitment
- Built the Way This Guide Recommends
- Sources
- FAQ
What Side Seamed and Tubular Construction Actually Mean
A tubular tee is knit as a continuous cylinder, so the body has no vertical seam running down each side. A side seamed tee is cut flat from fabric and then sewn together, with a side seam running vertically along each side of the garment, a classification that sits among the standard seam types used across garment construction. That seam is not decorative. It is a structural line that shapes the torso and gives printers and tailors a fixed reference point.
You can usually tell which construction you are holding without a label:
- Turn the shirt inside out and look for a stitched seam running from underarm to hem on each side.
- Feel along the sides for a raised seam line versus smooth, uninterrupted fabric.
- Check the hem for a slight taper or curve, a sign of cut-and-sew shaping rather than a straight tube.
How Side Seams Shape a Tee Differently Than Tubular Cuts
Side seams let a pattern maker contour the body without adding darts, pulling the garment in at the waist and easing it back out at the hip or chest using nothing but the seam line itself. That shaping depends on grainline placement and how much stretch the fabric has, since a seam cut off-grain on a knit will twist or pull no matter how well it is sewn. Tubular tees skip this step entirely, so the silhouette stays boxy and uniform from shoulder to hem, which is fine for a relaxed fit but does nothing for anyone who wants a tailored line through the chest and waist.
The tradeoff shows up in common fit complaints. Side seamed shirts occasionally end up with a pointy or uneven hemline where the seam curve was not eased correctly, a fixable issue but one that only exists because the shaping is there in the first place. Tubular shirts rarely have that problem, mostly because there is no seam to get wrong.
- Choose side seamed construction for fitted apparel, workwear meant to move with the body, or anything sold as true-to-size.
- Choose tubular construction for loose, boxy casual tees where drape matters less than price.
Pro Tip: If a side seamed sample hem looks pointy at the seam, the fix is usually a small curve adjustment at the seam line rather than a full repattern.
Construction Tradeoffs Between Cost and Finishing Quality
Tubular construction is cheaper because there is less to sew. The body comes off the knitting machine already closed, so the factory skips the cut-and-sew step required to join two flat panels into a side seamed shirt. That labor difference is the entire reason tubular blanks dominate the bargain end of the wholesale market.
What you get for that extra labor on a side seamed tee is finishing quality you can actually see and feel:
- Double-needle stitching at the hem and sleeves, which resists the seam popping that plagues single-needle construction.
- Taped seams at the neck and shoulders, which keep the collar from stretching out of shape wash after wash.
- Coverstitch hems instead of a basic overlock finish, giving a cleaner edge that holds up to repeated laundering.
None of these details show up in a product photo, but they show up after twenty washes. A tubular shirt with a plain overlocked hem will usually start looking tired long before a side seamed shirt finished with double-needle stitching does.
Printing Implications: Alignment, Registration, and Spirality
Side seams function as built-in alignment marks. A printer loading a shirt onto a platen can square it up using the seams in seconds, which speeds registration and keeps multi-color designs consistent across a run. Tubular bodies have nothing to square against, so the fabric can shift mid-print, especially on larger platens, which drags out setup time and raises waste on anything beyond a simple one-color job.
The bigger risk with tubular knits is spirality, the twist that develops in plain knitted fabric where the wales lean off true vertical instead of running straight up the shirt.
- Lay the shirt flat and measure the horizontal shift of the side “seam line” (or the equivalent point on a tubular body) from top to bottom.
- Convert that shift into a percentage of the garment’s width to get the spirality figure.
- Compare the result against known thresholds before committing to a full print run.
One sourced figure to know: spirality above 6% in tops and shorts, and above 4% in skirts and pants tends to detract visually, meaning a printed design can look crooked even when the print itself was applied straight.
Printers reduce these risks by pinning tubular garments before loading, using platen clamps that hold the fabric square, and favoring flatter, lower-stretch fabrics for large or multi-color designs.
What Happens to Fit and Print After Repeated Washing
Spirality does not always show up on day one. It often develops or worsens after a handful of wash cycles, which is why testing a sample through several laundry runs before committing to a bulk order matters more than eyeballing it fresh off the rack. Seam assembly plays a direct role here: a side seamed shirt with proper coverstitch or overlock finishing holds its shape through repeated washing, while a poorly finished hem, tubular or not, starts to curl or fray far sooner.
Care habits protect both the fit and the print:
- Wash printed garments inside out in cold water to reduce surface abrasion on the design.
- Skip high-heat drying, which accelerates shrinkage and can worsen existing spirality.
- Check a sample garment after five to ten washes before scaling up a print order.
Finishing choices like overlock versus coverstitch hems are a big part of whether a hem survives that cycle count looking clean or starts unraveling.
A Quick Checklist for Choosing the Right Blank
Pick your construction based on four questions, not gut feel.
- What is the budget per unit, and does the print run justify paying more for shaping and finishing?
- What printing method will be used, since multi-color and large-format jobs benefit most from side seam alignment?
- What does the end customer expect from fit: relaxed and boxy, or tailored and true-to-size?
- How many wash cycles does this garment need to survive before it is considered worn out?
Before ordering, ask suppliers directly about construction type, stitch types used at the hem and neck, the pre-shrunk percentage, and what use case the blank is recommended for. Treat vague answers as a warning sign. Any listing that skips construction details entirely, or describes stitching only as “finished” without naming the stitch type, is a listing worth skipping.
Pro Tip: Ask for a wash-tested sample, not just a spec sheet, before committing to volume.
For apparel meant to hold up in the field, side seamed construction with reinforced finishing is the safer bet every time durability and fit matter more than shaving cents off unit cost.
Brass & Bunker Co’s Shop-Floor Approach to Construction
The brand was founded by a firefighter and a product designer, and that pairing shapes how it thinks about a garment meant to be worn on duty, not just in a photo.
- Hems get double-needle stitching to resist popping under repeated movement.
- Necks and shoulders are taped to keep their shape wash after wash.
- Hem finishing follows coverstitch and overlock practices chosen for wash resistance, not just speed.
Why Construction Decisions Reflect a Bigger Commitment
Every stitch choice on a shirt is a promise about how long it will hold up under real use. Gear built for first responders does not get graded on a hanger, it gets graded on a call. A taped neck seam that survives two hundred washes instead of fifty is not a small detail. It is the difference between gear that lasts a career and gear that lasts a season.
— Brass & Bunker Co
Built the Way This Guide Recommends
Every construction detail covered above, side seamed shaping, double-needle hems, taped necks, informs how this brand approaches building its own tees.
The result is apparel meant to hold up through duty shifts, training, and everyday wear rather than fold after a season. If you want a shirt built on these same principles, the Brass & Bunker Co t-shirt collection is the place to start.
Sources
FAQ
What are the three types of seam?
Seam classification varies by source, but garment construction commonly refers to plain seams, flat-felled seams, and bound or overlock seams, each suited to different stress points on a garment. A side seam refers to its position on the garment rather than its stitch type, so a side seam can be constructed using any of these methods.
Why do some shirts not have side seams?
Shirts without side seams are usually tubular, meaning the body was knit as a continuous cylinder rather than cut and sewn from flat panels. This construction skips a labor step, which lowers cost but also removes the shaping and alignment benefits a side seam provides.
What does tubular mean in t-shirts?
Tubular means the shirt body comes off the knitting machine already closed into a tube, with no vertical seam running down the sides. It is a cheaper way to produce a shirt, but it results in a boxier fit and offers printers no built-in reference point for alignment.
What is a side seamed shirt?
A side seamed shirt is cut from flat fabric panels and sewn together along the sides, creating a vertical seam from underarm to hem. That seam allows for body shaping without darts and gives printers a fixed line to square garments against during production.
Does Brass & Bunker Co use side seamed construction?
Brass & Bunker Co builds its tees with finishing details like double-needle hems and taped necks and shoulders, the same quality markers covered in this guide. Shoppers can browse the full t-shirt collection to see these construction choices in the current lineup.
