Top-Toberfest: Man of Steele Graphic Tee Tutorial

It's day three, of our Top-toberfest celebration!  Today I've got an idea for a simple graphic tee.

Around here we are pretty much t-shirt and jeans type people.  90% of the time we are running errands, or doing things around the house, so getting dressed up doesn't happen too often.  Graphic tees are fun and practical.  My regular readers have heard me go on and on about how I'm not crazy about most licensed tees.  I don't think that a superhero t-shirt, or any t-shirt for that reason, needs to have multiple images superimposed on one another.  Simplicity is just fine with me.  I prefer graphic patterns. I could have a closet full of polka dots and be perfectly happy. My four year old on the other hand, has his own ideas.  To find a happy medium, we created a simple freezer paper stencil, to create a mom approved Man of Steele t-shirt.

To make the shirt I created my own small superhero emblem.  I wanted it to be small enough to sit inline with some diagonal running stripes.  I cut out the emblem, adhered it to the t-shirt, and then used two larger pieces of freezer paper to create a bold horizontal running stripe.  They sit just above and below the emblem.

I then cut 1/4" strips of freezer paper, and followed the diagonal lines of the emblem to create the diagonal lines. For more information of freezer paper stencils, see this tutorial.

Using some metallic fabric paint, I created a worn effect by lightly covering the open spaces.  My paint is a little old, and it actually worked perfectly for this project. 

Here's a look at the amount of paint coverage that I had.

I love the way it turned out, and so does Clark.  Big bonus, since he's pretty hard to please these days. I intentionally left the S blue.  I wanted the stripes to play just as big of a role in the shirt as the emblem, They do a pretty good job competing for your attention.

So when you create your next graphic tee, consider hiding an image in a repeating pattern.  

Love him!

Top-Toberfest: Embellished T-shirt for Boys

Yep, that's right.  It's Top-toberfest time.  Hopefully some of you are as excited for it as I am.  I am really excited to share some of the tops that I've been working on, along with some amazing projects from some guest contributors.   We have several very talented ladies that were willing to help me out with the series, and share their talents with us.  I hope that as their guest posts come up you'll take the time to tell them how much you enjoy their work, after all, positive feedback is always encouraging.

For Day One of this year's Top-toberfest I thought that I'd share a little t-shirt revamp that I worked on for Clark.  I picked up a basic pocketed t-shirt at Children's Place for $1.99 on sale-Wahoo! Unfortunately it was short sleeved and plain, but fortunately we can change that.

                                          

When I was trying to decide what to do to dress it up, I had several different techniques running through my head...should I stencil it, use embroidery thread on it, distress it, bleach it, etc.  In the end I stuck to one basic process that gave it a whole new look.  With the help of some scrap knit fabric, some heat and bond iron on adhesive, and my sewing machine; I added some details to the pockets and the sleeves.