Couture 

Like pretty much all the other aspects of this project, the custom shirts came together with near-blissful ease. Since the software side of the project didn't get finished until somewhere around midnight, the whole shirt concept was nearly abandoned entirely. Projects that begin after midnight are rarely completed before dawn, and in my experience, those which somehow do get completed are rarely pretty. 

Would we really need shirts that shouted "free floppy photos" for our project to be successful?

Despite the hour, I was compelled to continue by three truths. 

• First of all, I had all the materials. In addition to the glitter vinyl, our thrifting that afternoon had netted us two matching black teeshirts (plus some fabulous heels for me) and we had picked up a plotter/cutter some years ago for $6 (two actually, but the first one got turned into a robot). 
• The second truth is that I've used that plotter/cutter extensively since buying it (mostly for creating packaging from recycled cardboard) so I knew my way around its hardware and software. 
• The third truth was that I actually did believe that the shirts were critical to the project. 

Without the shirts, all we had was items, but with the shirts we had a whole concept.

So I had the goods and I had the gumption. I also had a worry. From wikipedia:

"The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities."

I'd never used the plotter/cutter for it's perhaps most common intended purpose of slicing vinyl. Plus, making graphics for shirts requires some mirroring and flipping, and my dyslexia gets worse after midnight like a wet Gremlin. Worse yet, I'd never applied heat transfer vinyl, and like the fools we are Jack and I had only bought two shirts, so there would be no second chances. 

We needed sleep. I was begining to fear that I would spoil the experience of attending the festival by staying up all night on a project for which I should have known that I lacked the time to finish. 

But I have poor impulse control and a generally low regard for my own health and safety, so off I went anyway.

I launched the dumb software that the printer requires (which also requires a dumb online account, ensuring that it will dumbly become non-functional someday). Choosing the first appealing font I saw in the menu, I arranged my message in a pleasing manner and saved the file to a USB drive. 

Loading the file on the printer, Jack and I mirrored the graphic there, then guesstimated a depth for the cutting blade. We heavily taped the very rolled-up vinyl down to the printer's mat, loaded it, and hit start. Three minutes later, a perfect cutout was done. The blade depth was close enough to correct, the mirroring was proper, and the size of the text was just right for a shirt. The cutter operated perfectly, despite being used, several generations old, and having recently been filled with ashes due to being left outside during recent Los Angeles fires. Based on these successes, I thought we'd be in bed within the hour.

A Hiccup

We had trouble with our iron. It may not surprise you to learn that we aren't fond of ironing clothes around here, so the only iron on hand was a small vintage travel model, and it wasn't getting hot enough to reliably adhere the vinyl to the shirt. We cut the second shirt's vinyl while we struggled with the iron, before eventually deciding to call it quits and went to bed unsatisfied.

Next section: Shirts Part 2