How is a t-shirt made? The 7 manufacturing steps

How is a t-shirt made? The 7 manufacturing steps

A t-shirt is made in seven steps: the fibre (grown cotton or polyester), spinning it into yarn, knitting the jersey, dyeing, cutting, sewing, then finishing and checks. Your logo comes afterwards, on the blank t-shirt once it is finished.

What to know about how a t-shirt is made:

• A t-shirt is knitted, not woven: its jersey is made of loops of yarn, which is what gives it stretch.
• Each step leaves a trace you can read on the product page: "combed" or "carded" for the yarn, the fabric weight in g/m² for the knit, "tubular" or "side seams" for the sewing, "pre-shrunk" or "washed" for the finishing.
• Based on figures from ADEME, the French environment agency (Ecobalyse, 2026), for three cotton t-shirts, about 95% of the water footprint comes from growing and washing the cotton, before any factory.
• At tknp.io, we do not make blank t-shirts: we pick them from recognised textile brands, then decorate them to order.

A merch t-shirt is often judged at first touch: the feel, how the collar holds, how it sits on the shoulders. None of that is decided when the logo goes on. It was all settled earlier, in a chain that starts in a cotton field (or a polyester plant) and ends in a box of folded t-shirts.

Understanding that chain has one very practical use: reading a product page and knowing what each word promises. Below, the seven steps follow one another, each with what it changes for the person who will wear the team t-shirt.

The 7 steps of t-shirt manufacturing in one table

T-shirt manufacturing always follows the same order, from fibre to final check. The table sums up what happens at each step and the word that gives it away on a product page.

Decorating your logo is not in this table: it comes afterwards, on the finished t-shirt.

1. Fibre: grown cotton or polyester

Making a t-shirt starts with a fibre, almost always cotton or polyester. The French Wikipedia puts it simply: a t-shirt is made from knitted, stretchy fabric, usually cotton or polyester fibres.

Cotton is a plant fibre that surrounds the seeds of the cotton plant. After harvest, a gin separates the seed from the fibre, then the fibres are pressed into bales, ready for the spinning mill. Polyester takes another path: it is a plastic made from oil (PET), and Wikipedia states that 1.9 kg of crude oil are needed to make 1 kg of it.

On a product page, the fibre is shown on the "Composition" line. Organic cotton, grown differently, has its own article: why organic cotton costs more.

Which manufacturing step uses the most water?

For a cotton t-shirt, most of the water goes into growing and washing the cotton, not into the factory that sews it. ADEME, with its Ecobalyse tool, put figures in 2026 on the water footprint of three cotton t-shirts, in litres of water drawn and polluted:

Across these three examples, growing and washing the cotton account for about 95% of the total. ADEME also takes into account how long they last: it counts 30 wears for the €10 one, 42 for the €20 one and 59 for the €30 one. The calculation leaves out machine washes at home. Its method also weighs water scarcity where the cotton grows and how waste water is treated. The European Parliament quotes a higher estimate: 2,700 litres of fresh water for a single cotton t-shirt. The detail is in ADEME's infographic on the water footprint of a t-shirt (in French).

2. Spinning: from fibre to yarn

Spinning turns the fibres of the future t-shirt into a continuous yarn, and this is where cotton becomes "combed" or "carded", two words you will find on product pages. The fibres are first carded, meaning untangled and laid parallel; for a combed yarn, they also go through a comber that removes the short fibres. The French Wikipedia describes the combed process as more expensive but of better quality.

The yarn is then twisted, in two main ways. In ring spinning, it winds onto a spindle that turns. In open-end spinning, it forms inside a rotor spinning at very high speed. These words appear as they are on product pages: Stanley/Stella's Creator 2.0 states "Organic Combed Ring Spun" cotton, the same brand's Freestyler "Organic Open End Carded" cotton, with a jersey its page describes as "slightly textured" with "a heavy, dry-touch feel".

The difference between combed, carded and ring-spun cotton has its own article: combed and ring-spun cotton, and what they change.

3. Knitting: the yarn becomes jersey

Knitting turns the yarn into jersey, the most common fabric for a t-shirt. According to the French Wikipedia, the jersey stitch is the most common knit, the one knitting machines use for stockings and t-shirts.

A knit is not a woven fabric: its yarn forms meandering loops, which gives it far more stretch. In factories, jersey can come off circular machines, which knit a seamless tube: the Canadian manufacturer Gildan dates its move to integrated manufacturing to 1984, when it bought a knitting mill fitted with these machines.

For you, this is where the jersey's mass in grams per square metre is decided: the product page calls it fabric weight, for example 155 g/m² for Stanley/Stella's Crafter, 180 g/m² for the Creator 2.0, 240 g/m² for the Freestyler. Which weight suits your team is the subject of our article on the heavyweight t-shirt.

4. Dyeing: the fabric or the sewn t-shirt

Dyeing gives the t-shirt its colour, and it can happen at three moments: on the yarn, on the fabric before cutting, or on the garment once it is sewn. Colour can thus go onto the knitted fabric: at Gildan, for example, the site opened in the Dominican Republic brings together knitting, dyeing and cutting.

Dyeing also weighs on water: according to the European Parliament, textile production is estimated to cause about 20% of global clean water pollution, mainly from the dyeing process.

Dyeing the t-shirt once it is sewn gives a washed-out look that varies from one t-shirt to the next: that is garment dyed, which has its own article.

5. Cutting: the pattern, size by size

Cutting takes the parts of the t-shirt out of the dyed fabric, following a pattern drawn up for each size. The body (a front and a back, or a tube for a tubular t-shirt), the sleeves and the collar band come out of this step, ready to be joined.

This is where the shape of the t-shirt and the spread of sizes are decided. On product pages, the shape is called Medium Fit, Relaxed Fit or Oversized at Stanley/Stella, and the size range runs from XXS to 5XL on the Creator 2.0. For a group, this is a line to check early: the wider the size range, the easier it is to dress everyone in the same model.

6. Sewing: shoulders, collar, sleeves and hems

Sewing joins the cut parts of the t-shirt, and its details are what the "Construction" line of Stanley/Stella product pages lists. On the pages we read, reinforcements cover the shoulders, the collar, the sleeves and the bottom hems.

Jersey stretches, so it can be joined on an overlocker, a machine that cuts, stitches and finishes the edge in one pass, and whose seams stretch, which the French Wikipedia describes as particularly suited to jersey. On product pages, sewing shows up in precise details:

• Tubular or side seams. A tubular t-shirt is cut from the tube of jersey, with no seams down the sides: Russell's Authentic Classic T is described as "Tubular cut". Others are made with side seams, like B&C's #E220.
• The collar. A neck tape is sewn inside the collar; on JHK's Man Regular T-Shirt, the taping runs from shoulder to shoulder, with double topstitching at neck, shoulders and waist. What makes a collar stay sharp is the subject of our article on the stretched-out t-shirt collar.
• Sleeves and hems. The Creator 2.0 has set-in sleeves and wide double stitching at the hem of the sleeves and body.

None of the product pages we read ranks tubular construction above side seams, or the other way round: they are two ways of building a t-shirt.

7. Finishing and checks

Finishing covers the last treatments of the fabric or the t-shirt: washing, pre-washing, pre-shrinking. Several product pages describe them: Stanley/Stella's Creator 2.0 has "garment-washed fabric", Tee Jays' Unlabeled Baseball Tee is "Double pre-washed" and "Enzyme washed", and several B&C and JHK t-shirts are listed in pre-shrunk cotton.

What these words actually promise for size, after washing, is explained in our guide to why clothes shrink and how to avoid it.

Checks, for their part, show up in certifications. GOTS covers, according to its standard body, every step of production, from fibre processing and spinning to wet processing, manufacturing and trading. A model with OEKO-TEX Standard 100 has been tested, according to the standard body, "from yarn to finished product": every thread, button and accessory, against a list of over 1,000 harmful substances. A certification applies to the blank t-shirt as the brand sells it, not to the decoration added afterwards.

Where are t-shirts made?

A t-shirt can go through several factories, sometimes in several countries, before it reaches a box. Gildan, which owns its factories, said in 2021 that it runs close to 30 of them, for spinning, textile and sewing; its cotton comes from the United States, where its spinning mills also are, and its fabric and sewing plants are often close to each other. Stanley/Stella lists 17 production partners.

The country of manufacture, when given, is on the product page: B&C's Baseball says it is made in Bangladesh, and the Francis t-shirt is "Guaranteed made in France", in combed organic cotton jersey. Not every page says so.

And when does your logo go on?

Decoration comes after the seven steps, on a blank t-shirt that is already finished. At tknp.io, we do not make t-shirts: our garments come from recognised textile brands, and what we add is your logo, to order.

Some blank brands plan for this from the design stage: Stanley/Stella explains that its in-house decoration lab tests every model. On timing, our FAQ counts 10 working days of decoration as standard, plus delivery; the detail is in our article on the production time of custom clothing. Which technique to choose for the logo, embroidery, screen printing, DTF or DTG, is covered in our guide to textile decoration.

Comparing two constructions on a blank t-shirt

The clearest way to understand what a product page describes is still to hold two t-shirts. Our FAQ makes room for this: one unmarked garment can be bought on its own, so you can check its size, fabric and colour before ordering a run.

Take, for example, two t-shirts of the same fabric weight, 185 g/m²: a B&C #E190, tubular, in pre-shrunk ring-spun cotton, and a Tee Jays Sof Tee, in combed ring-spun cotton with side seams. Lay them side by side and turn them inside out: on the #E190, the side is one continuous stretch of jersey, with no seam; on the Sof Tee, a seam runs from the armpit down to the hem. Then compare the hems at the bottom and on the sleeves, and how each t-shirt hangs once worn. The model you keep is then customised as a run, from 10 units per product reference, with sizes and colours mixed.