Holiday shirts with creative hooping

When you look at these two shirts, what do they have in common?

Besides the fact that they are holiday Lynnie Pinnie designs, that I tested, on 4T shirts, for my son. Ok, there's a lot in common, ha! But there's something else in common... can you see it?

These designs fall in the category of "off center" designs. The cape on Super Ginger

and the tail on Heart Monster

cause the body of the character to be off center. Placing these on shirts can be tricky so you have to pay attention. One strategy for good design placement is to scoot the design over in the hoop so it looks centered. But with both of these designs they completely fill the width of the hoop and there is no room to do that. Instead of taking these 5x7 designs into my 6x10 hoop (which would waste a lot of stabilizer), I hooped the shirts off center to compensate.

You can print templates, trim out the design, lay it on your shirt where it looks right, and then hoop your shirt. But I don't like to waste paper (oh who am I kidding, it's the ink I don't want to waste), instead I use my template to help me place my design.

I look at the design carefully in my software (I use Embird). I decide where I think the visual center of the design is (red line) and compare it to the actual design center (black line). For the Super Ginger design, the center of the head is about 14mm to the right of the vertical axis:

and the center of the monster's body is about 11-12 mm to the right of the vertical axis:

SO... what I do is find the center of my shirt, and then adjust where I lay my hoop template down. Instead of putting the axis of my template directly on my shirt's center line, I move it over to the left the appropriate amount. It looks weird to hoop your shirt off center, but in the end, the design looks perfectly placed!

I haven't gotten a good picture of my son in his monster shirt yet, but here he is in his Super Ginger shirt. Now that Christmas is past, we do not run the risk of you telling him his shirt is funny or cute. It is not funny. It is not cute. It is cool. Got it? COOL. Very important distinction. Remember that for next year if it still fits him. ;)