# Newbie with a Heat Press = Bad Shirt!



## BadBobby (Sep 18, 2015)

Hi this is my first post. Please forgive me for not knowing much about the lingo - I'm learning as I go.

I'm just trying to make some shirts for friends and family. With a little research and a _very_ limited budget I acquired an Epson WF-7110 printer, a cheapo eBay heat press (the squealer) and some transfer paper.

The paper is called Red Grid. It is 11x17 and has red square lines on the back.

The problem I am having is that the portion of the transfer paper that remains after trimming looks absolutely awful once the image is transferred to a shirt.

My shirts are all light pastel colors, the images are bright and colorful, but that excess transfer film ruins the entire shirt.

So what am I missing? How do you guys do it?

I can't possible trim precisely along each and every image. I believe this is called 'weeding'. Is there some secret to weeding that I'm unaware of?

Thanks!


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## Blue92 (Oct 8, 2010)

A steady hand and Exacto knife or a cutter with contour cut capabilities.

That is the downside to most transfer papers.

There are supposedly some that are self trimming / weeding but I've never used them.


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## hoxie (Nov 3, 2012)

Use Jet Pro Soft Stretch paper, and contour cut as close as possible to the image, as stated in the reply above.


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## BadBobby (Sep 18, 2015)

Thanks for the replies!

Can you take a look at this shirt and tell me if this is "normal" for left over transfer paper on a shirt (yes I know I forgot to mirror the image first!) 

By normal I realize now that I have to trim closer. What I'm asking is if the (to me) extreme visibility of the remaining transfer paper is normal, or should it be almost transparent and barely noticeable.

I can't see where to attach an image, and I tried to follow the link at the bottom that says "Need to upload an image?" but the Manage Attachments button is not appearing.

So I uploaded the image to tinypic.com and am including the link here. I hope that's ok.

http://oi59.tinypic.com/4uc9at.jpg


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