T-shirt crafting

Over the weekend while I was catching up on my blog-reading, I found these easy instructions on Homemaker for decorating t-shirts. It just so happened that Bradley had a plain shirt in his drawer, so yesterday while he napped, Grammy got busy.

I first measured the width of the front of the shirt, then cut the letters of his name out of vinyl using my Cricut. Design Studio made it possible to size the letters so they fit neatly across the entire front of the shirt.

To help with placing the letters, the center of the shirt was marked with a pin. While I just “eyeballed” the letter placement, the pin helped me keep things fairly well centered.

Once the letters were on the shirt, I did rub them pretty hard to make sure they were secure.

The countertop was protected by a plastic trash bag, the shirt in the middle, then I put straight chlorine bleach (Clorox) in a spray bottle and sprayed the entire shirt, front and back. I made sure to spray under the arms so the shirt bleached evenly.

The bleaching started immediately as I sprayed. As soon as the entire shirt was covered, I quickly removed the vinyl letters and tossed it (by itself) in the washer. I did wash it twice to get rid of the bleach smell.

Here’s the finished product. I think Mr. Bradley is pretty happy about his personalized addition to his wardrobe. His mommy loved it and told me, “You know we’ll have to make him one of these for every size he grows into?”. Shouldn’t be a problem.

 

*This technique can be used with lots of other things besides vinyl letters. Anything that can be laid on the shirt and sprayed with bleach will work – stencils, magnets, household tools. Use your imagination.

*One of the tips in the original post I read was to spray the bleach into the air and let it land on the shirt. That would work great for doing this craft outside, but I was hesitant to spray bleach around in the house. I will try it that way, though, once the weather warms up.