Football shirts

[MHodson]

Hi, a very new framer here. Can I please ask how you all frame football shirts? I'm staying away from tape and using a tag gun but I'm not getting a really tight pull. Any advice would be grateful.
TIA

[Ultima Thule]

I go for a loose finish with some folds showing - its fabric and should reflect that to my mind. If it is going to be displayed absolutely flat and stretched you might as well just photograph it and frame that. I only do it like that by specific request and the almost total preferment of my customers is for the more natural look.

[MHodson]

Thank you, it looks great. Did you pin it, tag gun it or sew it to the board? Can I also ask how you got the 3d look? Thanks

[Not your average framer]

Getting a decent price for framing football shirt locally to my shop is like pulling teeth. I'm not someone who will happily do an untidy and scruffy looking you, but may such customers will spend a furtune on a football shirt and compain about the price for getting it framed. Draming a football shirt to make a really nice job of it takes quite a bit of time. I turn down framing more football shirts that I accept, purely because the price that some customers are willing to pay is completely un-reasonable. many even come back having afterwards bought a cheap ready made frame and want free advice how to do it themselves. They have no idea what they are doing and expect you to drop what you are doing to explain what they are doing wrong.

I find it very hard to get a decent price for the work and to make a worthwhile living while framing football shirts, without customers complaining about the price. Top quality football shirt framing alway costs decent money and is worth a proper price, don't let people beat you down to a price where at the end of the day, you have earn't nothing. Also spend time learning how to hide stitches and tags so they cannot be seen, This is a vital skill, but also a hard one to pick up, for some people. I am naturally quite neat, but even so there was a learning curve and there can be a degree of finese that is required to do some things, which takes a bit of working at.

Nobody ever taught me, I just picked up. Being really fussy I instinctively had a good eye for what looked right, but it still took a lot of practice to get up to the standard that I felt was a proper standard. To be honest, I would say that it is not an easy thing to pick up to and come away from a one days training course with everything up to the proper standard, but a good training course taken with a really well skilled training instructor is probably money well spent. I have not been on any of the courses provided by Framers Equipment, but they quote the coriculum for each couse and not only seem to have things really well sorted and lots of people who have been trained by them say nice things about them and their courses.