tiny run

I imagine the skexis screaming the title to this post, and it pleases me. It seems this trial, this gauntlet I have thrown at myself, will not rest, no matter what I seem to think or pretend.

The population of my home recently increased by one (and if you missed the sequence of birth twitters and photos, then you indeed, missed) and I am still operating under the plan to do this shirt thing. I hope that everyone I’ve come to hold dear is still up for my usual slow delivery and antics, as I mess around in this internet shirtailer experience.

In the spirit of messing around I found another feature on the ’so expensive I will be paying off for eons to come’ sewing machine. It can do continuous lettering stitching! Interesting! It also can do little animals?? On this shirt the little pigs could be anything from pigs to rats but on a sturdier fabric this might turn out…most promising…

The second saga of production for the bacon design is as rife with turmoil and hair pulling moments and gasps of exasperation at the bottom of a lonely, dry well as the first.

First round found difficulty mostly with the garments being embroidered, and this round finds its antagonist within the very threads themselves. I hazard a guess that most of the details of variegated thread vs. candy cane thread is of little interest to the general populace. I also propose that most people are not interested in how much of my profit margin was lost on UPS faster than ground fees for various threads in an attempt to match the original designs’ thread color.

I would, however, surmise that those few who ordered the second run of the bacon shirt, would wonder why the hell is that taking so long? Indeed. I have received several emails to that effect, though my kind customers did not use the word ‘hell’ in their questioning. They are a civilized bunch. And quite forgiving.

But the tale is as follows:

The original threads used in the first prototypes and the final production run of the first bacon shirt came from Australia. How did I get Australian threads to begin with, here deep in the US midwest, would be a fair question that I would at this time ignore. Those original spools ran slightly thin, and I worried that they did not contain enough thread left for the second production run, so I set about finding supplemental spools within the continental bounds of my country. There was driving to local threaderies, as well as online orders placed. An additional and finally acceptable set of two spools were finally decided upon. Forward momentum was resumed.

Then in quick succession of events everything tumbled to dust again.

All spools were sent to the embroiderer. All spools were received by embroiderer. All blank shirts were received by embroiderer. Embroiderer calls me and says that they will not do the job without at least ten spools of each color thread. This is not entirely unsurprising, as most embroiderers have large multiple head machines in order to stitch out a design quite a bit faster than one-at-a-time. I’ve seen pictures of some machines that can do up to twenty four stitch-outs at a time. Huge. What made this surprising, though, is that they did these one at a time previously, and now they were laying down the law. Said law was not mentioned when the original discussion was had about second run, or even when the purchase order was submitted.

In order to comply, I would need to purchase an additional twenty two spools of thread. Please bear in mind that this thread is not inexpensive, especially the glow thread. My lunch today was less than one spool of the non-glow. I generally don’t have much margin on designs, and purchasing these spools would effectively eliminate a profit margin, as well as being to eat into the money being held to cover the eventual shipping of product to customer.

I ran through all the options slowly for a few hours that afternoon, covering everything from buying the spools to tossing in the towel, collecting whatever refunds would be available for supplies already procured, and issue refunds to all bacon customers. I also tried calling around to other local embroidery shops and seeing if anyone would handle it based upon the spool count already possessed. I even checked craigslist for a production quality machine to do it myself. Found one for about two grand. The best, and ultimately, the only, option, was to have the current embroidery company handle the job, to reselect two meat thread colors based on what they had in house and procure the needed six extra spools of fat glow thread to get to the total of ten.

There have been a few aftershocks since that final reroute.

The supplier of the glow thread didn’t receive their backorder. The embroiderer picked a pink that was far too light. But all this is a far cry from the surprise twists and turns experienced thus far. That I can handle.

The thing that worries me a bit, but only a bit, is that the bacon with not look exactly like the one pictured. Now, my poor photography plus your monitor settings equals who knows what you are seeing in comparison to actual product photographed. But this might be more noticeable, since the lower of the two meat threads will no longer alternate between a pink and a light red. It’s going to be all pink. Not the end of the world, at this point, as long as the damn shirts happen at all. And this does differentiate the first bacon run from the second. You want limited edition, you got it.

And as always, when these roll into your mail receiving receptacle, or even beforehand, if you are all, like, “this is bunk!” then I will certainly refund your monies. I am here to earn your love with my interpretation of bacon in thread.

One year ago, it came to pass that I started this crazy train of shirt onslaught called Tiny Run. Somewhere in thereabouts, either just before or just after, I was thinking about a bacon shirt. I wanted to do something playing within the bounds of expectation, but I also wanted to stand out from the growing internet bacon-crowd, and thought that I could up the ante by doing something simple, tasteful, a single strip across the chest, for instance. Short, sweet, perfect.

Within that idea, I still strove to be different from any bacon-meme based anything that I’d seen or would even be likely to exist. I thought I would embroider the strip of bacon! Awesome! Still not enough. How about the ‘fat’ of the strip, it would be embroidered with glow in the dark thread. Awesome! Still not enough. I’ll offer this masterpiece on four different color shirts, set to reflect a background of the buyers preference of ‘done-ness’ colors that bacon will reach upon cooking. Short and sweet was rendered more perfect.

I set about creating the original art and digitizing that into stitches. My home machine struggled to stitch out the design with any accuracy. I laugh now at my former level of digitization skills, or the simple facts that made every attempt to stitch it out a different newbie failure.

Over time and much thread, material, and sweat, I had a version that I thought was acceptable. I set about the task of trying to take a decent picture of it, and found my camera could not capture the glow itself. I subbed in a blacklight bulb to produce images that resulted in a purple ‘glow’ which I thought suitable to give the idea of the actual glow element, even if that looked green in actual glow enactments.

Finally, the bacon shirt debuted and my small advertising campaign brought in traffic beyond my small mailing list. Orders commenced, and were quite exciting. As each order rolled in, it was clear that this item would be my biggest seller, and it still is to this day.

A long enough space of time passed that I started to think that my home stitchery was not very good. Certainly not good enough to carry the weight of the original idea, or the pressure of delivering something awesome to so many people.

I started contacting local embroidery companies, to determine what could be done. The final company that seemed more reasonable in price had some stipulations. They didn’t have glow thread; I would need to provide it. They would digitize the art, and there would be a $100 fee for the process. I would also provide the blank shirts, which needed to be heavier weight than the American Apparel shirts originally detailed on the order page.

I found a suitable shirt replacement, but they didn’t offer quite the same coloring as the original options, and the sizing was also slightly different. I sent out an email to those who had ordered, asking them to examine these new options, and reselect a size and color, asking them to hold on a little longer. Everyone was still jazzed with love for the shirt. Further emboldened by their support, I ordered the shirts. I ordered the thread. By this time the company had finished the digitization of the original strip of bacon art, and I got to see a demo of what it looked like stitched out.

Gorgeous. I was very excited. But slightly overwhelmed trying to keep all the colors and sizes and people straight. I made a spreadsheet. After the shirts and thread arrived I took them to the embroider and waited for assembly and completion.

After about a week, I had the privilege of picking up a box of a variety of colored shirts and sizes and took them home over a month after the original design run on the site was completed. They were gorgeous, and I was so proud, and pleased that I had ordered a few extra. Putting up the original stitched-at-home with the pro-embroidered, it is easy to tell the difference.

As a final processing step, I ironed a covering inside of each shirt, to cover the back of the stitches, and protect people whose skin might be sensitive. Then I attached tags, packed them, labeled them, and shipped them out to the US , Canada, UK, Germany and even Ohio.

It remains a high point in an effort to supply interesting and top quality items that most people, myself included, have not come across before. I think I did ok. People wanted to know what food I would do next. Suggestions ran rampant. I knew I was eventually going to go with a more breakfast theme for what I was calling the ‘as you like it’ series.

But I guess I wasn’t done with the bacon yet. I also did a glow-in-the-dark bacon print edition, comprised of two strips of bacon, which I donated to a benefit auction. That was fun, but the shirt still seemed to command enough interest for a reissue. That, and my step-dad really needed one, as during the tumult of the first round, he was left forgotten.

So here we are, a year from go-time-one, and it seemed as good a time as any to pull out the old favorite for another spin.