EasyWeed Used for Dodge Super Bee Logo!

This Throwback Thursday design serves two purposes. First, it shows how a garment can dictate a design… and how on rare occasion, you can apply two overlapping colors at one time.

I was looking for ideas for this Throwback Thursday and I just wasn’t feeling any logo in particular. I went over and started looking through our blank garments and saw an awesome bright green Gildan t-shirt. Normally I wouldn’t get excited about a green shirt… but this particular shirt reminded me of the muscle cars of my youth. One of my neighbors drove a “Green Go” Dodge Coronet Super Bee. I loved that car! I remember trying to hand paint the logo on the side of a wagon with poster paint. The result wasn’t that great, but the real logo was! Now that I had my “Green Go” shirt, I found the logo online and began digitizing it in CorelDraw. I quickly found that the logo was all out of whack. I cleaned it up and modified it as if the original designer had access to a computer. This logo presented some challenges. It has some really fine detail. Look at the bee’s tongue for example. On the final piece, the center of that tongue is only .008″ thick! Yes, because of EasyWeed’s sticky backing, you can cut fine detail… but this was REALLY pushing the limits. Weeding was fine though. I really didn’t have any issues with it other than a few corners sticking. That could be due to the cutter’s offset though.

Super Bee logo digitized in CorelDraw. This is a 3 color design with only a 2 step application.

Once I had all the Super Bee logo pieces cut and weeded, I decided to try and skip an application step. This situation only happens rarely though. As you can see, my white piece is a nice solid shape. I carefully peeled the white off the carrier, making sure not to stretch it. Then I laid it face down on the back of the black.

All the pieces for the Super Bee Logo laid out on the Green Go shirt.

If I applied the white separately, I would have had to do it as the first layer. Trying to lay out a small blob shape in the middle of a garment and have it be perfectly lined up for the other colors probably wouldn’t have worked. Doing it this way, I had the white perfectly registered to the black and could position the black prefctly where I wanted it. I laid the black and white on the shirt and used a Sharpie to draw a line around the neckline. After a quick trim with some scissors, I was good to go. I applied the EasyWeed Super Bee logo with a 2 second tack. This would insure that there was no shrinkage as I still had to apply the Sun Yellow details.

Check out the details! That tongue is only .008″ thick!

After peeling the carrier away, I applied the yellow and then did a full 10 second application. Even though the detail was tiny, the overall logo is huge. I started at 8.5″ wide and 29″ tall. I trimmed at the neckline and trimmed at the bottom of the shirt for a perfect fit!

All in all, I’m very pleased with how this shirt turned out. It’s a very unique look with tons of small detail. Someone in the office actually thought the Super Bee Logo was printed on ColorPrint Easy!

Final EasyWeed Super Bee logo shirt with inset of actual Super Bee car.

For your next job, don’t fear the details and if you’re having a creative block, rummage through your blank garments and maybe one will spark an idea for how it should be decorated!