He's here, he's there, he's every f-ing where, Roy Kent costume (Ted Lasso)

[Bloop]

Figured I'd post this costume I did for Halloween. When I decided to go as Roy Kemt, I thought it would be easy to just buy a jersey, but of course, there was nothing available thsy was as accuraye as I wanted. I wanted an AFC Richmond 'DubaiAir' jersey as seen in season 1 of Ted Lasso, and unfortunately, those don't exist.
Here's what I wanted:

I found some unlicensed versions that were avalable for sale on etsy and the like, but it seems like they all got shut down.
So I opted to customize one of the "official" options.
I looked at the Warner Brothers shop, but there were accuracy issues with each option:

The "exclusive Roy Kent jersey as seen on Ted Lasso" doesn't look like the one "as seen on Ted Lasso" as it's missing the sponser (or even a blank space for one), and doesn't have the baseball type sleeves (angled toward neck). The back and other details look okay - though he name KENT doesn't appear to curve as much on the real jersey and the font is a bit off - but the wrong sleeve style was a deal breaker for me, especially at $69.99.

They also have 'bantr' jerseys avalable (no Roy Kent options, but available without a name/number listed as the "fan jersey"), but while the sleeves are correct, the patch and obviously the sponser name aren't accurate to the season 1 jersey. And again, since it was also $69.99 at the time, more than I wanted to spend for something I might ruin when I tried to customize it:

I ended up getting the Spirtit Halloween costume jersey. It actually is pretty good for a budget option at $29.99 (it also came with socks and few stick on number patches for the back:

The patch is actually a patch, though it's got inaccuracies. The wing logo is embroidered, which is odd because the original appears to be printed with the rest of the graphics (I think the original amd these are dye sublimated?).
Another plus - I wss able to buy this at my local Spirit Haloween store instead of relyimg on shipping, which might not have artived in time for the items from the WB Shop.

 

[Bloop]

Here's the Spirit jersey before any customization:

It's looks shorter when layimg flat than when it's on, but it is a bit shorter than expected. Fortunately, it looks close to the lemgth of the jerseys on the show when wearing it.
Compared to the ones on the show - colors and sheen are good, and I originally thought the collar was too loose, but that's how the real ones are:

The wing logo bugged me a little, as it's embroidered and not quite in the right spot, but since it's embroiderd to the shirt, it'd be pretty much impossible to remove. Same with the patch - it's not quite the right size/shape, but it's embroider stiched to the jersey so I didn't think I could remove it without leaving lots of holes.
My first thought was to recolor the patch so that it was navy blue instead of light blue. I figured a navy Sharpie would be the best option for color fadtness and fine detail work (as opposed to fabric paint or dyes):

First attempt - I was thinking of painting the area around the center of the patch red, but I didn't think it would end up looking very good:

Colored the rest in:

It definitely looked better, but I decided to change it more later.

 

[Bloop]

For the 'DubaiAir' logo and the name/number on the back, I used iron-on inkjet transfer paper. I needed a slightly larger size paper (the kind for dark fabrics) than standard letter size for the logo, since it had to print across the front (about 13" if I recall). My printer does legal size (8.5" × 14") but I couldn't find any in that format. I did find some 11"× 17" dark fabric transfer paper, which I trimmed to fit my printer. I found a logo online which I had to edit to clean up the details and also the colors, especially the background, to match the jersey. I also decided to print a replacement patch over the original (seen below in black and white)
Test prints, for size and color:

Trying to get the color close to the jersey was harder than I thought. First, the jersey ia shinier than the paper, so it would never match exactly. Second, the way it looked on my computer screen was different than printed. And printing on the ironon paper changed the colors slightly too. I made lots of test prints, adjusting the colors and also the printing options, but I finally got a pretty good match (bottom print):

I"ve used inkjet ironon transfer paper before, but I also checked online, watching a video from the manufacturer of this brand. What I didn't know, is that the instructions were for cotton blend fabrics, and my iron ended up too hot, which made the transfer turn translucent in spots. I also had used a piece of corregated cardboard inside the shirt to iron on, which is not only not hard enough (instructions say not to use an ironing board, use a hatd durface) but also the corregstions made the transfer print unevenly do that there was a bubbly pattern. It's more noticable in person, but you can see it in these pics. My only idea to fix it was to iron another copy onto the first print - it more opaque, but still looked bad (2nd pic):

Third time's the charm?:

Third layer finally looked okay - I finally found out my iron was too hot for this fabric before I ironed the third transfer onto the jersey. It's not as flexible - almost like I just slapped a bumper sticker to my chest, but it was acceptable. I'm glad I didn't buy a $70 jersey.

 

[Bloop]

Next up: the patch. As I said in the last post, I decided to make an ironon transfer for the patch too. I edited together pics of a patch for sale and pics of the best reference mages I could find and came up with this (before and after)

I needed to iron it on twice, since I had a little bleed through, though not as bad as the 'DubaiAir' logo.
At this point, the front side was finished:

Comparison pics (mine vs the show's):

Next up, the backside.