Collier's Cool Cats

Brian Collier Memorial Ball Tournament T-shirts

I was recently contacted via Facebook by a team that will be playing in a memorial baseball tournament for the late Brian Collier, a soldier in the Canadian Military who lost his life in action overseas. They have begun holding an annual softball tournament in his memory and the proceeds go towards scholarships for the local High Schools to Bradford Ontario and remaining proceeds to helping kids enjoy the experience of playing baseball for the local teams. Having lived in Bradford for about 5 1/2 years this one hit close to home. I quickly agreed to the contract and set the wheels in motion. I was sent a preliminary design that I quickly worked with and got all of the pertinent information to create the best possible graphic that I could muster. 

It was decided quickly that I would design for an 8 1/2 X 11 transfer so this was a mitigating part of the design process. I came up with a design over the next day and sent it off for approval. They loved it.

The team was supplying the shirts so it was now a waiting game from the supplier before I could get started. The shirts took about a week and a half to come so I utilized the time to get all of the graphics printed and trimmed. My supplier Benjamin at Aprimo Group at All image Printing came through for me as usual with flying colours. He had everything ready to go for the order and all I had to do was pick it up. Excellent customer service as always which is the way he works. The shirts came in and looked great in a desert camo. 

The shirts need to be pre-pressed to extract any excess dampness and to smooth the shirt for the transfer.

Nice and smooth and dry. Time to measure across the width to find centre. After letting the shirt cool for a minute or so, it was time to peel the transfer from the backing paper and line it up.

The graphic placement worked out that the base of the Memorial Tournament lettering lined up to the armpit seams for the Large X-Large 2XL and 3XL shirts so lining it up made things go even more smoothly. Next step is placing the ironing sheet over the graphic. Parchment paper can be used in a pinch for smaller graphics but the ironing sheets work best for larger graphics. I used parchment for these.

Th iron was set to the cotton setting and the timer set to a minute and a half. The best method is medium to hard pressure to get the transfer to set into the material.

Starting with getting the transfer stuck down in place from the centre outwards, you then get to the outer edge and any tips that extend past the graphic. Those edges require a bit more attention because they are a weak point on the iron-on. 

After the minute and a half is up, the next step is taking a cloth and rubbing the parchment down. This serves two purposes. It sets the graphic in a bit more but it also draws heat out of the parchment for removal. An extremely hot parchment can pull up the iron-on.

Peel the parchment back slowly watching for peel up.

After the parchment is completely off do a quick scan of the edges.

Next step, adding the company logo on the sleeve using the above steps. Difference being because of the size, 15 seconds of heat sufficed.

This is the final photo of how the shirts came out.

The shirts have been delivered and the team is extremely happy with them. Good luck at the tournament Collier's Cool Cats. For more information on the tournament, please follow this link

Sapper Brian Collier Memorial Ball Tournament

Stay creative my friends.