mike rp had a remarkably good idea a few weeks ago.  we had completed the basic design of our 2006 clothing order with hincapie (and i'll try to get some images of our new kit up soon from the proofs) but we realized that the clothing might not be available in time for the first few races of the season.  we talked about a few different options such as picking up stuff from end of winter sales or doing a small order for generic stuff.  we also looked at a couple of small companies that do custom work in technical fabrics or wool.  given that we had already done a full clothing order, we wanted to keep the costs down, and we didn't want to go through the hassle of another round of graphic design.  so what's to do?  only one answer, make your own.  sound crazy?  it's really easy.  check it.

we got together at mike and laura and nils and mia and ari's house one day after work.  mike had tried to delegate the acquisition of a number of materials to me and i had turned in what can only be called a typical performance: getting nothing done.  mike picked up all the slack.  he got the materials and the tools together and laid it all out.

the basic plan was to use inkjet printable cotton and to find a way to produce a strip that we could apply to the front of the jersey.  this seemed like an intuitive approach so we opted for a few sheets of the printable cotton, some fabric bonding material which is activated by heat and some think black material for piping.  the initial plan was to just bond the printable cotton to the jersey.  there were two basic problems with this: the printable cotton is really thin and we were unsure that the heat and bond adesive would stick to the polyester fabric of the jersey.  a battlefield decision was made to cut up an old white cotton t-shirt and use that as a backing material for the printable cotton.  we ran several team logos off on a sheet of printable cotton and then used a fabric adhesive to bond it to the cotton fabric material from the t-shirt.  we then cut this into strips that could be attached to the jersey.

you'll note that we opted to run the strip right over the zipper.  these jerseys will mostbe b used for winter and spring races and rides and they are long sleeve.  there is sufficient "zip" to be able to remove the jersey comfortably.

once we had the basic stuff in place, it was a matter of attaching the new strip to the jersey for good.  although i have since been told by several reliable people that fabric adhesive would work, we opted for stitching.  i still think it was the right decision but may try some fabric adhesive on some additional graphics for my jersey at a later date.  laura did almost all the stitching.  there was some concern initially about whetehr we woudl break needles by trying to sew through printable cotton, backing, jersey and piping but once we got the machine set up correctly, it worked really nicely.

so there you have it.  a "works" project jersey.  want to see it in action?  here you go...  total cost was less than a dinner at most any dc restaurant.  it's got a cool retro feel, clean look and machine washable; that's a new feature my darlings. 

posted by scott with huge thanks going to out to laura for all the work she put into that project.