In Ithaca, the most ubiquitous article of clothing is the “Ithaca is Gorges” shirt (Ithaca has a lot of gorges, for those of you who are a little slow on the uptake). On any given day you can be pretty sure of the fact that at least 10% of the Cornell population is wearing one. It’s become such a popular shirt that half the people who wear it are wearing it to be ironic and campy. I own one, but tend to wear it only when I’m not in Ithaca.

There have been many take-offs on the shirt, either replacing “Ithaca” with the wearer’s proper noun of choice (”Last Call is Gorges”, Last Call being one of the a capella groups) or replacing “Gorges” with another appropriate adjective (my personal favorite, “Ithaca is Cold”). Basically, as long as it’s a solid-colored t-shirt with the a bubbly seriffed font, it’s identifiable as a take-off on an Ithaca is Gorges shirt.

Towards the middle of last year, I was talking to my friend Dan about the t-shirts when he remarked that he had once seen someone wearing a shirt that said “Ithaca is Drop-Dead Gorges” (Cornell is–falsely–rumored to be the university with the highest suicide rate, due to people jumping into the gorges). I declared that this was the best pun I had ever heard and that I must own one of these shirts. After searching fruitlessly for one, and considering getting one custom screenprinted but discovering that it was not only expensive but had a minimum order requirement, I took it upon myself to make it with my own hands.

This was easier said than done. After trying various methods of stencilling, all of which failed miserably, I finally decided to try using some kind of iron-on transfer. I wanted it to be white letters on a colored background, so I used white iron-on transfers. I scanned in my Ithaca is Gorges shirt and Photoshopped in a “drop-dead” (this involved the fabrication of some letters, because I couldn’t for the life of me find the right font). Then I printed it out, cut the letters out of the iron-on transfer paper, and ironed them onto a shirt. Voila, my shirt was complete.

The letters bend a little where the shirt is stretched a lot (it would have worked better on a regular t-shirt instead of a girly shirt), but it’s not too bad and I’ll figure out how to remedy that problem the next time I want to print a shirt. I feel very accomplished.

My masterpiece: