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Saturday 13 August 2022

Design Your Own Custom Sports Banner

Create your own pro team player banner
DIY a custom pro sports banner...
My personal situation is proof enough that sports memorabilia is not necessarily the exclusive domain of a man cave, but if ever you wanted to contribute a unique sewing project to your man's special space, I've got a project for you.

Today's post is about how you can design a custom wall hanging/banner featuring the name, number and team colours of a favourite player.

If you're artistically inclined and have experience using a graphics program, you can totally do this on your own, but if not, I'm here to lend a hand.

Forever Lafleur wall hanging by eSheep Designs
Fat quarter turned wall hanging...
This idea came to me during my catharsis through creativity period when I designed my Guy Lafleur fabrics with the intention to turn them into scarves. As I was finishing up, Spoonflower held a 50% off sale on fat quarters and wall hangings.

Having never seen the wall hangings go on sale before, I was intrigued by them and whipped up a couple of designs that came this close to being ordered. At the last moment, it occurred to me that I could DIY my own version with a fat quarter of linen cotton canvas and wind up with a slightly larger wall hanging than the ready-made one that Spoonflower sells.

Not to mention — even while factoring in the sale price and my having to DIY my own hanger — it would still save me a lot of moolah.




Here's the thing: an 18" x 27" fat quarter of linen cotton canvas sells for $15 regularly. Fat quarters and fabric in general goes on sale quite often, so by all means wait for a sale — up to 50% off — and pay less. Wall hangings likely won't go on sale that often and they regularly sell for $59; price includes a wooden magnetic hanging system. (Shipping is extra for both, and I imagine is higher for the complete wall hanging.)

By the way, if you haven't already noticed, there is always have a small image link near the top of the sidebar at left that lets you know about Spoonflower's ongoing sales. (They are sitewide, not just for my shop.)

Arturri Lehkonen Banner by eSheep Designs
Mockup of sports banner with horizontal stripes...

If you've read my posts about Spoonflower in the past, you already know that their fabric is printed on demand and that selections come with a white border around them. That border is quite useful as extra material for hems and seams. So for a design that's printed at 18" x 27", in all likelihood, you'll be able to have a finished (i.e., hemmed) item that's still more or less 18" x 27".

So there you go: Spoonflower takes care of the printing. Create an account, upload your file (making sure the design is oriented on its side; i.e., horizontally) and purchase your fat quarter of linen cotton canvas... oh, and you'll also get a 10% discount because you're now a "designer". Those of you who know how to use a graphics program from beginning to end can run off now and design your banner.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Banner by eSheep Designs
Mockup of sports banner with diagonal stripes...

For the rest of you who are wondering what form of help I might be offering, here's where I've done some work to create two basic designs. As you can see from the examples shown above, they are fairly simple; one has horizontal stripes and the other has diagonal stripes.

I've made both available in PhotoShop and Paint Shop Pro file formats for downloading, on an "as is" basis. (Note that no preview is available for the PSP file format.) 

Paint Shop Pro Diagonal (eSheepDesignsDiagonalBanner.PSP file)
Paint Shop Pro Horizontal (eSheepDesignsHorizontalBanner.PSP file)

If you have either of those programs and can use them in a rudimentary way — or know someone who does/can — just plug in the required text and colour codes on the various layers, save a final copy as a JPG (or TIF), create an account to upload to Spoonflower and purchase.

Montreal Canadiens hex codes courtesy of teamcolorcodes.com...

To access the proper hex codes for all of the major league sports teams' official colour schemes, go to a site called teamcolorcodes.com. It's a tremendous resource that even includes official fonts and team logos. (Before you start thinking about adding a logo to your wall hanging, you may want to consider copyright restrictions that most print-on-demand services like Spoonflower have in place.)


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To show you what the process entails, here are some screen shots from Paint Shop Pro demonstrating some basic edits.

Here is what you'll get when you load up the DiagonalBanner file. On the Layers palette, the three layers are identified as Background, Diagonal Stripes and Name & Number. (As you can see, the design is already oriented correctly for use in Spoonflower.)

Paint Shop Pro
Main Paint Shop Pro screen...

If you hover your mouse over the Background layer, you'll see that it's made up of two rectangular boxes, one red, one dark blue. To change these, specify the colours that you want on the Materials palette, select each half in turn and use the Flood Fill (bucket) tool to execute.

Click on the plus signs next to the other two layers to expand them to show all of the elements contained within each layer. (Clicking on the "eye" icon turns an element or layer from visible to invisible.)

Paint Shop Pro
PSP Layer palette...

The other two layers are vector layers. Name & Number is specifically a text layer. You can edit the actual text and you can change the properties of the text.

Double-click on a text element and you're automatically in edit mode. Editing text is straight forward, just type whosever name and number you want instead of "0 0" and "N A M E". If the name is short, you may want to add a space or two between each letter. Alternatively, if the name is long — like Kareem's — you'll have to compress the whole element afterwards to make it fit. (I wouldn't bother changing the font size though.)

Double-click on a non-text vector element — like Middle Thick from the Diagonal Stripes layer — and you're automatically in properties mode. Click inside the fill box and you'll open up the Material selection box. Enter your desired hex code for the element in the HTML box (circled in red below).

Paint Shop Pro
Changing vector properties in PSP...

Click OK and the middle diagonal bar will be changed to your desired colour.

To change the properties of a text element, you'll need to right-click on it to bring up a drop down menu from which you can then select Properties.... I would recommend that you leave the name and number white, however; if you need them to stand out against a light background, add an outline to them by using a positive Stroke width.


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For those of you familiar with using PSP or Photoshop, none of the above is new or complicated. For those who have never touched either program, it may seem daunting, but perhaps you know someone who can assist.

I'll be back in a couple of weeks to show you how to sew these up once you receive your fat quarter from Spoonflower. (Not like you can't figure it out, but I actually made myself a double sided banner and want to share that option.)

'Til next...

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