A collar tape crossed out and rewritten, not replaced

One small badge-sized print, sized to a jumper's actual collar tape. Two names stacked: R KOVA struck through with a single line, J KOVA written fresh beneath in a different pen. The stitching at one end has been unpicked and sewn again.

The garment wasn't replaced. It was re-registered.

What's actually printed on the collar tape here?

A record of the same jumper being reassigned from one child to the next, at the size it was actually made.

The design reproduces a woven name tape the way it would look sewn inside a real collar: two names in the same slot, the older one crossed through rather than removed, the newer one added beneath in a different pen. It isn't decoration standing in for the idea of a hand-me-down — it's the actual mark a household makes when a garment moves on to its second child.

Why is this printed small instead of as a big chest design?

Because a collar tape is meant to be read by one adult in a cloakroom, and printing it large would turn a private note into a slogan.

The real object this is based on is never seen by anyone except whoever's checking whose jumper is whose at pickup time — a teacher, another parent, the child himself if he bothers to look. Blowing it up to fill a chest changes what it's saying: instead of a quiet piece of household admin, it becomes a statement made to a room. Kept small and placed the way a real name tape sits, it stays exactly what it is — proof that this garment has already done its job once.

What separates a good version of this from an overdone one?

Leaving the strike-through as a single line and the correction plain, rather than dramatising the handover.

The tape doesn't need a border, a date, or extra ornament around it — the two names and the one struck line already carry the whole fact. Adding more turns a small administrative mark into something posed for effect, which undercuts the reason it reads as convincing in the first place: it looks like something a parent actually did in five seconds with whatever pen was nearby.

Does printing a name like this need anyone's permission?

Only the ordinary kind — the household's own names are the household's to print, the same territory as a name sewn into every item that passes through one school's lost property.

The names on the reference are invented, and a real one would be your own child's, so there's no outside licensing question the way there would be for a crest or a character. The only thing worth pausing on, the same as with any of a child's own belongings, is whether the older child minds seeing his crossed-out name go back into circulation on somebody else's shirt — worth asking once he's old enough to have a view on it.

Does this work for a jumper with only one name in the collar, not two?

Not really — a single name is just a name tape, and this design is specifically about the same tape holding two names in one slot.

What makes this version work is the visible history: one name struck, not erased, and a second added rather than swapped in on a fresh tape. Take that away and there's no handover left to show — it becomes the far more ordinary object that a garment kept in circulation and turned down rather than accepted by its second owner is the other side of.

Isn't crossing out a name a strange thing to put on a shirt?

No — the strike-through is what makes it a record instead of a label, which is the whole reason the tape looks the way it does.

A single clean name would just say whose it is now. Leaving the old name visible and struck through says something more specific: this exact garment already belonged to somebody else, and the household kept it rather than starting over — the same reasoning behind pulling a cot back down from storage instead of buying new. Both names carry the same surname, which is the whole story in two characters.

How does a small badge print like this actually print on fabric?

Well, provided the woven texture of the tape is suggested rather than copied literally.

A real name tape has a slightly raised weave that a flat print can't reproduce as texture, so the design renders it as clean linework at true collar-tag scale instead — the strike-through as one confident line, the second name in a visibly different weight of mark to read as a different pen. One or two ink colours against a plain ground is enough; anything more starts to look printed rather than sewn.

How do I get one made?

Describe the tape at JustOG — both names, and which one goes on top. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the shop.

The stitching at one end is still slightly uneven where it was redone.