Months ago, I began preparing for the 23rd Annual Run For The Hills. I have prepared the route and have most of the itenerary planned. Keeping in mind what has happened for the past 2 years, I also began seeking another source for our event Tshirts.
I have always liked the ability to produce a shirt with a full color photograph. It's easier and cost effective to take a photograph than to pay someone to do custom artwork. The equipment for printing our shirts is an inkjet printer. A wide format printer using special ink applied to a special transfer sheet. That printed transfer sheet is then placed on a tshirt that's positioned in a heat press. The ink turns to a gas under heat and penetrates the fabric.
This process makes the image permanent and also gives it what's known as a 'soft hand'. Meaning that with your eyes closed, you wouldn't know if you were touching the image or the bare white fabric. The past 2 years I had to use an alternate printer who used a different process. The feel was that of the old rubber iron-on transfers of the era when printed tshirts first became the big fad. Stiff, sweaty, and after a few laundry cycles, the image began to crack and peel off the shirt.
When I first started doing the event shirts, my printer had a high end Hanes shirt that was 100% cotton inside with a polyester outer. Through the years and successive printers, the Hanes shirts were no longer available and a 50/50 cotton/poly blend shirt was all that was available. The polyester was necessary because the ink was formulated to bond to polyester. Many didn't like the blend because it doesn't have the wicking ability of 100% cotton, and sometimes will irritate sensitive skin.
Today, I secured a source of 100% cotton shirts. Printed by inkjet and it has that coveted 'soft hand'. New technology has become available that makes these all-cotton shirts as durable as the cotton/poly blend. Images are printed directly onto the shirt, which reduces production cost due to no special transfer sheet is required, and it eliminates that heat transfer step. This allowed the printer to give our club special pricing that is equal to our cost at the other printer.
I will have a Georgia Fiero Club MEMBER shirt available at the April meeting, along with a Warwoman and Rattler shirt printed on the blend shirt. I hope we can entice our members to purchase MEMBER shirts to promote and support our club.