Introducing our pigment-dyed collection

The new version of our Herpak Franks Tee is printed on a pigment-dyed tee, which has a faded, vintage appearance.

Our pigment-dyed tees are no pig in a poke; pictures of them are on our website and they can be seen and touched in our store.

Yet in 2024, when our focus was on opening our store and debuting a makers market, we introduced our first designs on pigment-dyed tees without elaboration.

Now with four designs in five pigment-dyed colors, an explanation seems warranted. So let’s wade into the process that makes these pigment-dyed tees different from the other tees we have offered.

Regular dyeing

Since our inception, we have printed our graphic tees on Made in USA blanks from Royal Apparel of Happauge, N.Y., on Long Island. We used a cotton-poly heathered style for our first wave of tees, then switched to one of Royal’s all-cotton styles.

Our most popular designs — Pennsylvania Bigfoot Believers, Pennsylvania Craft Beer, 717 — are printed on the latter. Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful started as a heathered style before we switched it to all-cotton.

For both of those styles, Royal dyes the fabric and then cuts and sews it into tees.

Pigment sits on fabric

The process is reversed for the pigment-dyed tees: They are cut and sewn and then colored. Pigment “dying” is a misnomer as the process is more like painting the fabric rather than chemically bonding to it with dye.

That the pigment doesn’t penetrate as deeply as dye is why it results in a faded, vintage look. It’s a look that perfectly complements the vintage vibe of Stay Apparel.

Another giveaway of a pigment-dyed tee is the size tag in the collar. Because it is sewn in before the coloring process, the tag bears some of the pigment.

In April, we introduced our first pigment-dyed design, Keystone State, in mauve. We added a bluestone version at the end of the year.

Rounding out our pigment-dyed lineup to date, we also updated our Herpak Franks and Ben’s Bolt designs in brick and bluesteel, respectively, and introduced our Home Sweet Hershey design in java.

I had had my eyes on the pigment-dyed blanks for a while and envision incorporating more colors with our designs.

Our over-arching goal is to deliver cool American-made graphic tees with a sense of place, no matter how you color it.