Morrow Castle HTV Shirt Design

 

My husband sent me the above picture and asked me to please make us shirts (for the lifeboat drill) with this image on it for our upcoming 2022 cruise. 

Um... Okay...

I immediately googled SS Morro Castle to find the significance. I found several articles about the ship - and the disaster related to its demise. The ship serviced routes between Havana, Cuba and New York. On September 8, 1934, it caught fire and 137 passengers and crew members perished. It is part of the reason why we have the lifeboat drills on cruise ships - it's the best way to ensure that all passengers and crew know what to do and where to go in the event of an emergency. And, so we know how to use the life preservers properly - in the Morro Castle disaster many passengers died for lack of knowledge of how to use the life preservers they had: "As they hit the water, life preservers knocked many persons unconscious, leading to subsequent death by drowning, or broke victims' necks from the impact, killing them instantly."

Think about it - on a cruise ship, if the emergency klaxon rang out where should you go? You do have to get away from whatever the problem is... and that's what the lifeboat drill is all about at the beginning of the cruise. You are in cabin XX and you got to point YY. Your life preserver is in your cabin. Bring it to the drill - at the muster point the crew members will tell you how it works and when to don it. People with infants / extremely small children should ask the crew about child size life preservers. The drill feels like an interruption to your fun, but look at the article on the SS Morro Castle. Personally, in that story, I'd want to be a survivor rather than a casualty. 

I first digitized the design in my embroidery software. I set it up for embroidery on knits since we wanted to have both t-shirts and sweatshirts with the design. Since it was a line drawing, it consists of mostly satin stitches to draw the lines. There are some fill stitches, but only for the handful of windows that required it.

Sweatshirt 1, stitched out and laid on my ironing board. 

Attempt at a closeup view of the stitching. My Redline took about an hour to stitch out this 55,000+ stitch design.

For the t-shirts, I decided that it wasn't worthwhile to spend two more hours stitching them. Instead, I pulled the picture into Silhouette Studio and turned it into a cut file. It was fairly simple: edit the BMP he gave me to remove the words (I can add them back easily), then import into Silhouette Studio. Select the image and choose "Trace".  The image actually traced very well. I did have to "simplify" (described in earlier blog post) to remove extra points, but in general it turned out pretty good as it was. 

I added the word using a Stencil font. I had to curve the letters using warp (described in earlier blog post), and then reverse the whole thing when finished.

It cut out surprisingly smoothly. I used Siser's Glow in the Dark Heat Transfer Vinyl, and it weeded like a dream. It was too easy. Really. This stuff is awesome. 

Did I mention that it GLOWS? How cool is that? And for a lifeboat drill where we may be in the dark for a bit, it could be totally awesome. 

I also discovered I could have saved a bit of money if I'd purchased the Siser HTV at Michael's Crafts instead of at JoAnn Crafts. They seem to have sales at different times, so remember to check prices at various shops before running out to purchase materials. 

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My Cameo 4 doing its job cutting out the design. I usually put a book or something on the table in front of the machine so that the end of the cutting mat is closer to level with the machine. Doing that prevents the mat from bending and shifting out of alignment.  

Here I am weeding out a long piece of HTV in the middle of the design. Do note that because I'm using HTV, that I had to mirror the design. That's why the words look backwards. 

Here is is on my husband's t-shirt modeled by my dressform (the dressform is an excellent model because never moves or gets impatient while I photograph it). Traditional positioning for images on XL size shirts is 3" - 4" from the neckline. I usually measure using my hand - the width of four fingers is close enough and seem to work out nicely. I forgot to mark the center on the shirt, so I eyeballed it.

Here is my v-neck t-shirt modeled by the ever patient dressform. I placed it about 2 fingers below the center of the V because the v-neck is lower than a crew neck by about 2 fingers' width. The bottom of the V is also a good indicator of where the center of the shirt is, so this one was much easier to place.

Closeup of the Design to show details. 

Another closeup of the design, this time near to the bottom of the image. 

Both the HTV and the embroidered versions look great. I think we're ready for our cruise!

Happy Crafting!!!