Heat Transfer Vinyl to the rescue! My daughter waitresses near her university at the local burger bar. The ‘uniform’ is a t-shirt with the company logo paired with shorts or jeans. The stores in town that sell all of the university gear have the bar’s logo (sort of) but charge a minimum of $20 for a t-shirt. My daughter asked me to make her shirts last spring but the company no longer has the original graphic. After speaking to the manager, and getting permission (I even got permission for GLITTER, much to my daughter horror!!!!! rofl), I attempted a cleanup of the logo using MTC.

Here is what I started with (and neither of these are the image used on the t-shirts worn by all of the staff currently):

The fonts were all common fonts so it was easy to replace the wording. As you can see, the image is degraded but I tried to pixel trace it anyway. It all hinged on my successful tracing of the harness racing image. I started by using the color picker, reducing the resample rate and increasing the despeck value. I was able to bring in a rather clean image. Lastly, I used node editing for the fine tuning.

Here are the t-shirts I made using Thermoflex Plus standard and glossy:

Standard ThermoFlex Plus

Glossy Black ThermoFlex Plus

And here are the t-shirts using GlitterFlex II and GlitterFlex Ultra:

And, lo and behold, she likes the glitter!!!

Heat Transfer Vinyl and other Materials:

• ThermoFlex Plus Standard
• ThermoFlex Plus Glossy
• GlitterFlex II
• GlitterFlex Ultra
• Standard (red cap) blade
• Painter’s tape
• Transfer tape

Heat Transfer Vinyl Settings (Maxx Air):

• f = 25 (ThermoFlex Plus), 35 (GlitterFlex II and Ultra)
• v = 300
• p = 1

Heat Transfer Vinyl Steps:

1. Create or open design in MTC.
2. Cut heat transfer vinyl (be sure image is in reverse) that is secured onto the mat with painter’s tape.
3. Position design onto t-shirt and secure with transfer tape.
4. Apply heat as directed and remove carrier sheet as directed (all of these were warm peel).

All in all, each t-shirt cost about $6.00. (Of course, I didn’t charge my daughter anything for my labor.) Now, to make some t-shirts for myself…….