Tuesday, June 23, 2015

T-Shirt Refashions for Everyone

Happy Summer Everyone!  

I'm so glad we have finally made it to my favorite season.  Long days, relaxing mornings.  No more lunches to pack, homework to do, or racing against the clock.  Just chill time.  I am hoping that means I will have a chance to catch up on some sewing and upload all the things I have made over the past six months.  I love having a little archive of all the things I've made in one organized place.

Today, I am going to start by sharing a few t-shirt refashions I have done recently.

A friend of mine gave me this old Vans shirt, which I previously used the back of to make my sons Halloween costume.  I saved the front and sleeves because I knew I could refashion it for myself somehow.  I had another shirt just like this that he gave me that was black and gold and I transformed that into a cool skirt.



The entire back is cut out of this shirt above.  I had some cool, stretchy, fish net like fabric that I thought would look pretty cool on the back.  Maybe giving it that Madonna 8o's meets grunge rock 90's kinda feel.  I just laid the shirt onto the stretch fabric, cut it to fit, pinned, and sewed.  It came together very easily.

Finished product:


Ready to rock and roll this summer!


For my son, I transformed a plain blue shirt by adding a screen printed image of one of his favorite Dragonball characters, Vegeta.  I did it the cheat way, with freezer paper.  I did my best to draw an image onto freezer paper, then cut it out.


I ironed the freezer paper onto the shirt.


Then painted black screen printing ink onto it.


Once it dried, I ironed it with a dry iron and let it spin in the dryer for 5 minutes to set the ink.


Here it is on!  He loves it!!  I can tell because it is the first shirt he picks out after laundry day :).


For my daughter, I had a plain black shirt I wanted to transform.  I had seen a lot of bleach shirt ideas on pinterest and wanted to try that out.  The black shirt was my perfect opportunity.  She loves pokemon, so I had her pick one of her favorites, Mew Two.  I traced the image onto freezer paper, cut it out, and pressed it onto the shirt with an iron.


I just used the bleach spray that I had on hand.  It only took a few light sprays.  You have to be careful not to saturate the freezer paper too much or the bleach will get under the image.  Next time I might try to double up the freezer paper, I think that would work better.

Here it is on!  


She loved it and so did her little pokemon loving friends at school.  


I tried to make something for my son using this technique on a red shirt, but the red really didn't respond that well to the bleach.  It's probably best to stick to darker colors if you want to try this.

3 new, unique shirts, not too much trouble!