Custom Blankets and Throws: Fabric, Print and Finish
By The Velocity Wear Team
For a full-colour, edge-to-edge custom blanket you need polyester fleece and sublimation. That is not a preference, it is a constraint: sublimation only bonds to polyester, so if you want an all-over photographic or heavily patterned design, the fabric is decided for you. If you want the feel of a woven cotton or wool-blend throw instead, your decoration options narrow to embroidery on a corner or a woven label, and you should plan the design around that.
Print First, Fabric Second
Most people choose a blanket the way they would choose a jumper, by touch, then ask what can be printed on it. That order causes problems. The two routes barely overlap. Polyester fleece takes a sublimated design across the entire surface with no ink layer to crack, peel or stiffen, and the colour is genuinely permanent because it becomes part of the fibre. Woven cotton and wool-blend throws take none of that. Deciding whether the design is a full-surface graphic or a discreet mark on a plain blanket answers the fabric question immediately.
The Fabric Options in Practice
The names get used loosely, so here is what they actually mean when you are specifying an order.
- Polar fleece: the standard sublimation base. Light, warm for its weight, inexpensive, and the surface most likely to pill with heavy use.
- Coral fleece: a softer, deeper pile with a plusher hand feel, which photographs beautifully and needs a decent quality to stay that way.
- Sherpa-backed: fleece on one face and a fluffy sherpa on the other, noticeably heavier and warmer, with only the fleece face printable.
- Woven cotton or cotton blends: a proper throw with drape and often a fringed edge, decorated with corner embroidery rather than print.
- Recycled polyester fleece: performs much like virgin polyester and sublimates the same way, which makes it an easy substitution if it fits your sustainability position.
Sizes and What They Are Really For
Sizing is loose across the category, but three broad formats cover most uses. A stadium or lap blanket, roughly a metre square or a little more, is the giveaway and event format: small enough to carry, cheap enough to hand out, often supplied with a strap or a carry handle. A throw at around 130 by 150 cm is the sofa product and the standard for corporate gifting, big enough to be genuinely useful for one adult. Larger bed-sized blankets exist but move the cost per unit into a different bracket, and they are rarely the right choice for gifting at any volume.
Designing for the Edge
Edge-to-edge designs need bleed. The blanket is cut and hemmed after printing, so any artwork that runs to the edge must extend beyond the finished dimension, and anything you cannot afford to lose, especially text and logos, needs to sit well inside a safe margin. A design with a border framing it to the edge is the riskiest choice you can make, because a slight shift in cutting shows as an uneven frame. Central compositions with generous empty space around them are far more forgiving.
Edge finishes matter to the perceived quality too. A simple stitched hem is clean and durable. An overlocked or blanket-stitched edge in a contrast thread lifts the look considerably for very little. Fringed edges suit woven throws but not fleece, where they fray untidily.
“"A blanket is judged twice: once when it is unfolded, and again after the fourth wash."”
How They Age, Honestly
Fleece pills. All of it does eventually, and cheap polar fleece does it quickly, which is why a blanket that looked excellent in the sample can look tired after a season of real use. Weight is the main indicator: a heavier, denser fleece resists pilling better than a thin one. Washing cool and avoiding high-heat tumble drying makes a substantial difference, because heat is what mats the pile. Sublimated colour itself does not fade in the way a surface print does, so the failure mode is texture rather than image. That is worth saying to a client, because a blanket that is still bright but has gone rough reflects on you either way.
Where Blankets Earn Their Place
Blankets work best where the recipient keeps them in view: corporate gifting, hospitality, spectator sport, festival and outdoor events, and premium customer rewards. They are bulky and heavier than apparel, so shipping cost per unit is higher, and that is worth checking before committing to a large giveaway. Velocity Wear handles blankets alongside apparel in the same order, with a 20-piece minimum per order and items mixed freely within the run, and bulk discounts up to around 40% as quantities rise. Preview your design in the free Design Studio, check live pricing in the instant calculator, and expect sublimated work to run nearer 15-20 working days from artwork approval, with UK tracked delivery typically 2-5 working days after dispatch.