Many of you know that my daughter is a dancer and the team had a competition coming up, and they all wanted to make a team shirt. Well, Lily's birthday is coming up, so I thought why not kill two birds with one hot glue gun and make one giant party out of it.
The shirts were a big hit, using a few different methods to get the end result. There were fabric appliques for the names on the back and hearts on the sleeves, sponge painted letters on the front, and braided sides. I have done a quick tutorial below for each of the methods used on the shirts.
FABRIC APPLIQUES
SPONGE PAINTED LETTERS (OR DESIGNS...IT'S WHATEV..)
Trace templates on sponges with fine marker. Letters, numbers, random shapes, anything goes.
Cut all of the shapes and set them aside.
Pour fabric paint onto small paper plates. Use a new plate for each color since the paint will get smeared around the plate and become mixed up. Tulip fabric paint makes a line that comes in bigger squeeze bottles and the paint doesn't stiffen like the stuff in the little bottle.
Dampen your sponges. This will allow the sponge to expand for better coverage. Squeeze out excess water. Every now and again, you may want to wash out the sponges to keep them getting sodden with paint.
Press sponge stamp lightly into paint and keep from overloading the sponge. Shapes will be distorted if there is too much paint used.
There is one other thing I have learned using this method. Take the extra time to put a piece of cardboard or something in between the front and the back of the shirts...it is really easy to soak through the shirt layers with the paint.
CUT/BRAIDED SIDES OF THE SHIRT
So this one is a little harder to explain in print. So, in order to not re-invent the wheel, I found a quick tutorial on YouTube. For the shirts for the girls, it was this same method, but I made the cuts shorter and thicker and did not stretch the cuts. I did the shirts this way so there would not be the large gaps on the sides and it looked more like a traditional braid. I also tied the last loop to the bottom hem instead of a hole or around existing loops. Check out You Tube if you are interested in cut shirts. There are a ton of tutorials out there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCnpIzPiUXk
Anyway, hope you all enjoy and happy crafting!