Last weekend, we participated in Greek Games here at Rose. It was a blast, and we did well too. We won the cart race and made a respectable showing in pool/foosball/ping-ping. And what of pyramid? We won pyramid! We almost won Greek Games overall too but lost a tiebreaker dodgeball game to Delta Sig. Check out my photos from the day to see the action.

Notice the cool jerseys that say “Pi Kappa Alpha Athletics” in those photos? Yup, that was my project. I had a general idea of how I wanted the shirts to look: good-quality garnet soccer jerseys. The big challenge is that I had only 12 days between the time I acquired the project and when the jerseys needed to be printed and ready.

I started by going to my usual local source for printed shirts: Creative Impressions. I looked through their catalogs of sports jerseys but wasn’t able to find anything that I really liked. I really wanted to have brand-name soccer jerseys, like Diadora, Adidas, or Kappa. After looking around the web, I found a Kappa soccer jersey that I really liked and that was affordable. Just one problem — Kappa is out of business (at least in the USA). Disappointed, I resumed my search. I came across a nice Adidas jersey that was perfect except for the color (they didn’t offer it in maroon). Tyler noticed my plight and pointed me to a nearly identical jersey. A quick call to an inexpensive source was made, and the jerseys began their journey.

While the jerseys were traversing the country, I began playing with designs for the front. After some important inspiration (thanks again, Tyler), I drew my version of the front design. I brought the idea to Creative Impressions and finalized the screen version of the design.

Some time went by. The jerseys arrived, Creative Impressions printed the design, and names/numbers were fixed to the jersey backs. Perfect! I distributed the jerseys as soon as I got them rather than waiting two days for Greek Games.

I’m happy to say that the jerseys were well-received. They look awesome and feel great. There was only one little problem: the maroon dye bleeds. I wouldn’t have thought that a machine-washable soccer jersey would have a bleeding problem, but here it is. “No problem,” I thought, “I’ll just recollect the jerseys and wash them all.” So, I merrily gathered the jerseys and put them in washing machines. I set the machines to “Cold” and added no detergent. Half an hour later, I returned and opened the first washer.

My heart sunk.

Inside the washer was a mass of maroon jerseys, as expected. The shocker was that the white areas of the jerseys were pink. Very pink. I feared that I had ruined $1000-worth of jerseys, but I resolved to find a solution to the problem.

The solution turned out to be three additional wash cycles, each with warm water and copious volumes of detergent. I also spread the jerseys out among three washing machines and included an old white cotton t-shirt with each load. The purpose of the cotton shirts was two-fold: to soak up excess dye and to serve as an indicator for when the shirts no longer bleed. After four washing cycles, I was satisfied enough to dry the jerseys and redistribute them: the whites are white and the dye doesn’t seem to be bleeding anymore. That must mean I have domestic skills! Or I got lucky.

I’d rather believe that I have mad skilz.