Tees to Please

Posted by Heather Mitchell June 10, 2014

Tees to Please

My three-year old daughter loves bling... so much so that she's also slowly convincing me. :) While shopping for clothes for her one day, she spotted a t-shirt with a snazzy giraffe (with accompanying bling). "I can make that!" I said. Ok, so I'd have to invest in a rhinestone setting tool but with all the expected bling in our futures I said no sweat.

NOTE: If you live in metro-Detroit head over to Munro Crafts for great savings as well as a frenzy of fun. Expect to spend no less than two hours, even when you know exactly what you want. This place is like the Internet - a black hole of lost time! The nice thing about this place is you are rewarded with 40% savings when you spend $100 (soooo easy to do once you start looking at beads). At Joann's or Michael's you need your coupons so you may have wait. Warning - returns aren't as easy as at the chain stores! Additionally, wear emotional armor if you're sensitive - the sales staff can get very stressed, and 'unfriendly' isn't the best adjective for how you might be treated. I will say they're improving!

Difficulty: Medium to Hard
Materials Needed:
1) a shirt (you can simply buy one the correct size, I'm an upcycler)
2) fabric paint
3) textile medium
4) rhinestones
5) scrap cardboard to put behind the layer of fabric that your painting to prevent bleeding
6) scrap paper to make a pattern if you are making the shirt (do not use newspaper - the ink is just too dirty)

Tools:
1) paint brush
2) rhinestone heat setting tool
3) serger or sewing machine and matching thread if you are making the shirt

So Munro's is where I bought my rhinestone setting tool and Darice rhinestones. I chose to purchase these lower quality stones instead of Swaroski crystals to start my first projects. After this first shirt, well, the Darice stones are really for crap. If you're going to put all the effort and time into a project, splurge on some pretty stones. They'll make a world of difference!

Laying out the original shirt to trace onto Tyvek.

I started by pinning my daughter's shirt to a large block of foam with a post office envelope of Tyvek beneath. After I pinned it, I used a pen and traced the shirt to create a pattern. Any paper will work for this purpose and because I intend to make several, I choose this sturdy material which doesn't rip easily.

Using my newly made pattern, here I'm lining up the area around the sleeves and collar.

The collar area.

Next, I cut out the pattern, pinned it to my old shirt taking care to line it up near the top so I could save the work of making the collar, and then traced the pattern onto the shirt. I did this so I would know where the center of my shirt was; I did not have good scissors at hand to immediately cut the shirt.

The hand-drawn image that I will paint onto the shirt.

I drew my giraffe in the center lightly in pen.

Textile medium and acrylic paint.

I pinned the fabric to the foamcore and pulled out my daughter's colour of choice (blue to be un-unique from the original) and mixed the acrylic pigment 1:1 with textile medium. If you don't use the textile medium your image will still be permanent just not flexible. I prefer it to be softer so I use it. The more textile medium you add, the more transparent your paint will become.

Some stamped designs for texture.

For additional texture, and simply cuz I reeeeeally wanted to use my new rubber stamps and archival sepia ink, I also pulled those out and laid out a multitude of impressions across what would become the backdrop for my focal point.

The painted giraffe before details and rhinestones.

I filled in the outline of the giraffe with my blue mixture and added her black eyes and nostrils. It was unintended that the stamped ink would show up through the blue, but it looks great. A happy accident! I then added some mustard yellow and sage green spots. Afterwards, I needed the entire paint to be dry before adhering the rhinestones so it set it in the sun for several minutes to dry.

My new rhinestone setting tool.

I plugged in my new rhinestone setter tool. This portion of the shirt was a mundane and time-consuming task. I picked up each stone with the tip of the setter and held it there waiting for the glue to glisten and melt. Once melted I pressed the stone into place on the shirt. Finally I was done with the design. Now I just have to see it all together!

You can notice here that the rhinestones lack glitter and sparkle. When I'm better at this, I will buy the nicer stones.

These Darice glass crystals are supposedly glass but lack any sparkle. I'm disappointed in them. They reflect like plastic. :/

I then cut out the fabric, sat down at my serger, and as with most sewing projects I sewed the front and back together (right sides together) at the shoulders. I used a contrasting thread so it would be easier to see where I sewed.