There’s no way I could ever own a business that involved making personalized T-shirts. The temptation to build an entire wardrobe around my long list of rejected bumper sticker phrases would be too great. Eventually I’d have something like “You think I’m ugly? You should see my girlfriend” stenciled across my back each day of the week. I’d have way too much fun to ever turn a profit.
Thankfully, John Blenis has a little more self control. But not much.
“You can tell I’m a child of the 70s,” he said with a laugh, pointing to a rack of retro shirts he clearly designed for the few left who still admit to enjoying records and a good game of Frisbee.
Blenis owns and operates Fine Line Graphics, a custom clothing print and design shop on 14 Prentice St. in Norwich. A graphic designer by trade, he started printing T-shirts and clothing from his home about six years ago after working in the early 1990s with the late Kevin Hopson, a Norwich resident who did it as a hobby.
“I just became fascinated with it,” said Blenis, who spent 20 years in the private and public sector as a graphic artist. “Eventually I got tired of sitting at a desk all day doing computer graphics.”
Now Blenis rotates full-time between a computer and his eight-station shirt press, where he and his press operator Bob Wolf can crank out several hundred shirts a day. They also do sweatshirts, sweat pants, jackets, bags and umbrellas. Signs and banners aren’t out of the question, either.
“Every day is a little bit different. That’s what’s great about this work. We always have customers bringing in new challenges,” said Blenis, who moved Fine Line to Prentice Street about a year ago. “It’s fun to see the finished product of a nice design.”
Most times customers bring in their own drawings and concepts, Blenis said. But in some cases, he or Wolf, who is an accomplished artist in his own right, will develop original designs for people or, in some cases, ones they can market themselves.
“We can do most any design work people might need,” said Fine Line’s founder.
Once they get a design, using either computer software or actual handmade templates, Blenis creates vinyl or ink screen stencils.
