Behind the Scenes: FBRT

Surely you remember the shirts I did for the Fat Beagle Running Team earlier this week.  I thought they were worth revisiting; this seems like a fun project to show some of the behind the scenes things that go on…     

After my friend re-told me the story of being passed by the fat beagle on the trail, I started working on what I was thinking of for a design.  We don’t live close enough for her to pop over with the shirts or sit down and work on something together.  So while she was out and about, she left the shirts with my son’s teacher at preschool, and thankfully, my kiddo’s friend’s grandmother who was filling in for car pool managed to find the bag and bring it to me.  I’d asked my FBRT friend to make a rough sketch of what she was thinking for the design, to give me an idea of the size and scale in case we weren’t on the same wavelength.  In the meantime, I worked on this…

I’m so glad I did.  Here’s what she sent with the shirt.  (Did I mention that she went to art school?  In her defense, though, she drew this at a stoplight in the car while on the way to drop off the shirts.)Needless to say, I went ahead with my design. I printed it out and taped it onto my shirt.  This was the placement we’d talked about for the ladies’ shirts, and I wanted to make sure that I liked the way it looked.  Thanks to modern technology, I snapped a quick picture and sent it to her, too.  (She liked it better than the one she’d drawn!)Her husband’s shirt was another story.  It had a logo screen printed on it in the perfect spot for our new logo, so the plan was to put the beagle’s silhouette right over top of it.   I took my printed design, cut out the belly of the dog to make sure the logo would fit, and stuck it on the shirt.No go.  This beagle’s not fat enough.  Armed with the dimensions of the logo (now that I had the shirt in my possession), I created a bigger beagle to cover the logo.Aha!  I had to change the design a little to accommodate the beagle’s increased girth, but I quite like it.  Using the print out as a guide, I got the shirt in the hoop and lined up the cross hatch for the center of the design.I started stitching out the dog to be sure that it was in the right place.  Eureka!  The dog will completely cover that C9 logo!So I finished that one, and then I moved on to do the sister shirts—much easier placement-wise with no logo to cover.  Then it’s time to photograph these lovelies for the blog.  Ahh, the wonders of cropping.  Things that don’t usually make the blog:  (top left) kiddo #2, in his pajamas at 5pm because he got muddy playing in the backyard after school, (middle right) dog paw and ear— those two seem to seek out the camera every time I try to take embroidery pictures!  Also, (bottom left) my leg and bus stop shoes (I really try not to wear these in public).  Since the lighting was pretty crummy, I put my leg on the corner of the table to help stabilize the image to get something decent without using the flash.  I’m not sure how successful that was…The finished product.  And yes, I think I resorted to using the flash on this one.  We had a lot of rain this morning, so it was too muddy (remember kiddo #2’s early change to pajamas?) to drag everything outside, and I really wanted to get these photos taken so that the FBRT had them in plenty of time.  Plus, I wanted to get them up on the blog! Once again, good luck Fat Beagle Running Team, have fun on Sunday!