Top-Toberfest: A Shirt for Thunder by guest contributor Janine

 A Shirt For Thunder

Today I'm thrilled to have a guest contributor for Top-toberfest: Janine.  Janine is a work at home mom that loves to craft.  I'm so appreciative that she was willing to share her talents, and these great boys tops with us today.  She uses a variety of techniques, including: freezer paper stenciling, hand stitching, bleach, hand painting, and bubble wrap, to create some custom tops for her son Thunder.

My son’s name is Thunder Jason and I thought it would be neat to have fun with it and make him an original shirt. I find that boy’s clothing seems to be all the same and if you find something with words, pictures, etc it’s usually too over-the-top for me. I’m not a huge fan of  all the cartoony pictures and cheesy sayings.

I bought a plain, grey shirt from WalMart. First I washed it in case of shrinkage, then I sprayed some bleach on it. I would have used a bleach pen and done a more ’tatoo’ looking design, but I couldn’t find bleach pens anywhere in my town. After washing the bleach out and drying it I made a freezer paper stencil like this. I followed Cheri’s instructions and used red Tulip fabric paint as recommended by her, painting in the stencil with a small paintbrush. I made a large "T" lightning bolt and the small letters spell 'Thunder J.' When the paint dried I painted some bubble wrap and stamped it randomly on the shirt.

 And finally I did some embroidery. I made some tiny lightning bolts, ‘x’s on the wrist, collar, and bottom hemlines and embroidered “Made By Mama” on the shoulder.

   I’m SO happy with how it turned out! I‘ve also included pictures of 2 other shirts I made.

 The red shirt says, “You’ve been…Thunderstruck” and was made using the same freezer paper stencilling and bubble wrap technique.

   The blue one says, “THUNDERIFIC SO TERRIFIC!” and was made by hand painting with fabric paint and a paint brush. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do! Be careful, freezer paper stencilling is very addictive :)

Thanks so much Janine.  The tops turned out great, and I'm sure that your son loves them. I especially love the hand stitched details that you added, they really add something special.


  Want to share your custom tees or tops with us?  Link up all of your shirt related projects in our Top-toberfest link party. I'll be featuring some of my favorites from the party come November.

Freezer Paper Bleached 2 Shirts: Part 1, Live and Learn

So recently I have been really inspired by all of the freezer paper stenciling that has been going on in blog land.  I have seen great results with both paint (yet to try) and bleach.  I decided that bleach would be a great and inexpensive way to start.  I found some different instructions online and gave it a go.  Here is what I did, I'll share all of my little learning moments along the way.

What you'll need: T-shirt (I used an old top that I use for yard work or pajamas-nothing precious), a spray bottle with a fine mist (perfume or maybe an old hairspray bottle), freezer paper, a design to transfer, and some vinegar.

Now first mistake that I made was in using a cleaning spray bottle instead of a perfume bottle.  It didn't have a fine mist resulting in large drops of bleach and it became hard to really control the area that I was bleaching.

Step 1: Find an image that you want to transfer or draw one out yourself.  I found this great image on craftmanspace.com. (I am going back there for more great patterns...there is a really great art nouveau pattern I am loving).  I liked the simple image that wouldn't take me forever to cut out.  Remember that you are working with positive and negative shapes here.  You could go all out with your design, but I am so glad that I did something simple on this project (since it was a bit of a flop).

Step 2: Transfer your image to the paper side of your freezer paper, and cut out your shapes that you want bleached using an x-acto knife.

Step 3: Adhere a piece of freezer paper to the inside of  your t-shirt (behind your image transfer area) using your iron (this will prevent the bleach from seeping into the other side of your T, and back up into your image area from behind).  I don't have an exact time frame for you on the ironing, just long enough that the freezer paper  is stuck on there. Now adhere your freezer paper stencil to the front of your t-shirt using your iron.

Second mistake: I didn't attach a piece of freezer paper to the inside of the T, which meant that I had the same bleach spot on the back as on the front, and the bleach did sop up through the fabric and into the image area.

Step 4:  Mix your bleach bottle.  Like I said use a fine mist bleach bottle.  I have read different ratios for mixing the bleach, but I used 60% water, 40% bleach and it worked fine.

Step 5: Prep your vinegar bath and open your windows.  Before you go outside and start spraying away partially fill your kitchen sink with water.  I added about a cup and a half of white vinegar (there is nothing special about this amount, I just wanted to be safe).  You create a vinegar bath because it is going to set your bleach.

Step 6: Take your project outside and bleach your T.  This is kind of obvious, but spray only the areas that you want to be bleached.  If there is a border around your image you will probably want to spray around the perimeter so that the border is apparent (unless of course you want a few lost and found edges...those are always fun).

Bleaching action is pretty immediate (we all already knew this from past experiences right?).  I waited about 30 seconds and then took my sprayed project back inside to the vinegar bath.

Step 7:  Soak your T in the vinegar bath (stencil and all).  I soaked it for about 3 minutes and then poured a tiny bit of pure vinegar onto the shirt to make sure.  Rinse your t-shirt in water.

Step 8: Remove your stencil.  This should peel right off.

Step 9: Hang your shirt out to dry.  I did this merely because it was so stinky and I didn't want it inside the house.  You could also throw it in a separate load of wash at this stage, but I let mine do some airdrying first.

I wasn't 100% pleased with the way that my T-shirt turned out so I made a few more alterations-see them here.

Step 10: Wash and Wear.

Although this project didn't turn out quite as I'd hoped, I will be trying it again.  I think that there are so many possibilities.  Give it a try.  It is simple and inexpensive.

Freezer Paper Bleached T- Shirts: Part 2, Project Saved

I was slightly disappointed with the results from my first attempt at bleaching my t-shirt.  The thing that was really pleasing to me was the shade of pink that my blue t-shirt turned when it was bleached (a lovely thistle color).  I also liked the image transfer...but I was a bit disappointed with how subtle it was.  I made some rookie mistakes with this project. 1-I didn't properly adhere a piece of freezer paper to the inside of the shirt...this allowed the bleach to bleed through the  fabric onto the back, and back up into the image area from behind.  2-I used a cleaning spray bottle that didn't have a fine mist.  A perfume spray bottle or old hairspray bottle probably would have worked better. The cleaning bottle was hard to control, I couldn't bleach small areas as well as I'd liked to have been able to. Oh well, live and learn.

 So my attempt at transferring my image didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped.  I did like the color as I  and the pattern of the transfer, so I decided that the piece could still be salvaged.  I picked up my bleach bottle again, and began spraying the majority of the fabric, being careful not to interfere with the pattern previously transferred. I didn't like the area around the transfer, it wasn't as subtle of a transition from bleached to unbleached fabric (it kind of looked like a bucket of bleach was splashed on my shirt).  So my second attempt with the bleach bottle went much better.  I was able to alter the color of the majority of the fabric, just leaving happy little blue spots that peek-a-booed through my new "thistle" color.  (Does anyone remember Hypercolor T-shirts from the late 80's early 90's (you would breath on them and they'd change colors), well I never had one, but now I feel like the hippest girl on the block. )

I'd resolved the color issue with the T-shirt and now it was on to making the image "pop".  You can see in the early photos that the transfer did work, but it was rather subtle (2 shades of thistle instead of thistle and blue).   So I picked up my handy embroidery thread and began doing some hand stitching around my image.  I didn't stitch around all of the little circles in the design, but I did do the flower.  My T-shirt is stretch so I allowed my thread to pucker the fabric a bit (I just liked the look of it). I then attached a simple coordinating button in the center of the flower for added interest.  Then I used some lightweight fusible interfacing to secure the threads and prevent them from pulling when the shirt is being worn.

I'll be honest, for my first attempt I used an old T that I wasn't crazy about, it usually serves as a pajama top.  So the fit isn't perfect.  My new flower image, paired with the new thistle hue, filled me with a desire to "girlify" the T-shirt even more.  I gathered the sleeves by using some more embroidery thread. I just gathered  the top of the sleeve (probably the top 1/3, I did want it to be comfortable and still fit over my arms).

The fit of the T-shirt isn't perfect, but I am much more pleased with the alterations.  I might still wear it to bed, but I will probably wear it out to do yard work, maybe I'll even wear it camping this weekend.