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Hi, I'm Darryll and I live in Pullman, Washington with my wife and two kids. I'm a licensed Architect and am employed as a Project Manager at Washington State University. In addition, I have my own business doing residential designs in the greater Palouse area. I am a self-taught pianist, song-writer and singer and am involved in the music department at my local church.

Friday, September 25, 2009

Iron-on Transfers

This may come as a huge surprise to many kids who read this, but back in the ‘70s you couldn’t buy t-shirts with words, logos, etc. printed on them. You could buy any color t-shirt you wanted, but there were a very few shirts with logos on them, for the most part - they were just not available.


The big thing back then was iron-on transfers. They were huge! The stores that sold these had tons of solid colored t-shirts, oh – and you could get baseball shirts, tank-tops and some other types of shirts – but tons of shirts. The walls of these stores were covered with iron-transfer patterns, and there were also bunches of books with pages and pages of transfers.


The most difficult part was, of course, picking out which pattern to put on your shirt. There were bands, ‘70s sayings, popular culture icons, places, cars – a ton of cool stuff. I remember that one of my favorite t-shirts that I got was a blue shirt with the band Chicago’s logo on it. And my brother had one with the slogan “Keep on Truckin’” with the cartoon guy with his foot stuck way out on it. They were really cool!


There are some great websites where you can pick up retro t-shirts. Just Google retro/’70s/classic t-shirts and you’ll have some great old memory flashes as you peruse the pages and pages of what were some great iron-on transfers. Nowadays, finding them on the web is easy; clicking through “pages and pages” of them on the computer is also easy; ordering them off the websites is easy; opening your mailbox to find them is easy, too. Back in my days you had to make a real effort to get a ride or ride your bike to the t-shirt store, you usually involved a close friend or two, and you got to sit there and watch them “make” it after you finally chose the perfect transfer. And when you put it on, it was still warm!


Next time you see your favorite ‘70s image, maybe you’ll pop onto the web, order a t-shrit and relive those memories!

2 comments:

LaraAnn said...

I have this vague memory of mom doing iron-ons for my brother and I once. I wish that I could remember which ones. I do remember getting them done a few times when we went down the shore and that there was a store in the mall that did these.

Blast from the Past said...

...and it was cool to watch them do it! It was the high-tech thing of our day and amazed us to watch it in action!