Make Your Own Dang Sweatshirt

A prototype transfer I made on the Cricut.

The hardest thing we do here is apparel. No matter what we offer, people want it in a different color, style, size range or material. About 90 percent of items returned by customers are apparel, typically when a garment doesn’t fit like the buyer hoped.

Rather than just dump our apparel, I decided to try something different.

In the 1980s, almost every mall had a kiosk where you could get a custom sweatshirt or T-shirt made for your school, band or high school crush. The letters were typically blocky and “flocked,” which feels like suede.

I’ve always loved the way these look and especially the way they age.

Recently I bought a Cricut machine to experiment with a lot of different materials. My first thought was to use it in our publishing efforts (more on that later) and maybe make some small batches of stickers. After learning the ropes on the Cricut, I designed a Lost Art Press iron-on logo to make a batch of sweatshirts for our employees.

The finished sweatshirts we made for employees.

Then I asked our local shirt shop if they would sell us the transfers alone (with no garment). They said yes. So in the next two weeks we’ll sell a transfer that you can apply to any cotton or cotton/poly garment using a household iron.

The vinyl transfer will be inexpensive to mail, and easy to apply. And you’ll know beforehand that you love the fit and feel of your garment. The transfers are expensive (there is a lot of handwork to weed them – to remove the middle of the Os, A Rs, etc.), so the transfers will be $27. That’s more than I hoped, but I think you’ll be happy with the result.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. The margin on these is terrible – worse than tools. So we won’t be able to offer these to retailers. Apologies in advance. If you’re outside the U.S. and want one, I recommend using a re-shipping service.