My Painted Tree Tee: Altered T-shirt Challenge Results!!

After

Wow- I have SO much to tell all of you about The Creative Connection Event I attended last week. I swear I could do a week's worth of blog posts just about what I heard, saw, and learned.

Those are coming- first however, I'm going to let myself process all of a little more and then I'll be able to share intelligently (or at least that's the hope). In the meantime, I'll captivate you with my little altered t-shirt. Well, maybe not captivate you, but I bet you'll like it. Remember the idea was just to take a plain ol' t-shirt and just do something to change
(alter) it. I was playing with my bleach pen at first but then decided I wanted to see what would happen if I took some of the
techniques I use most in my art to alter the t-shirt. So that is what I did.

 * Shelley of Single Stone Studios and I are linking our t-shirt results and want to see yours too! Check out the links at the bottom of this article for more info!!! *

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Before

How to Make Your Own Painted Tree T-shirt

Tools and Materials

t-shirt

piece of cardboard to put into t-shirt to seperate layers

paints (acrylic or fabric)

paintbrush or two

palette or craft sheet

variety of printed fabric scraps

embroidery floss and needle

small scissor

liquid stitch fabric glue

clear letter stamps

inkpad (either fabric ink or Staz-on)

1. First thing I did was paint directly on the shirt. To do this I had a piece of cardboard that I stuck into the t-shirt and then pulling the front slightly taut I clipped the two sides of the t-shirt to the board with clothespins. Then I was able to paint directly on the shirt. I wanted to try using acyrilcs. I have a friend who swears they're no different then fabric paints so I thought I go with what I have and not go buy a bunch of fabric paints for this project.

2.After I painted the tree shape I added some blues to the background in a sort of cross hatch pattern.

3.Then, I cut out some leaf shapes from different printed green fabrics I had. I varied my sizes a bit.

4. Using embroidery floss and a needle, I straight stitched around the leaves.Knot and trim loose threads close.

5. Adhere leaves to tee with liquid stitch fabric glue. This glue is washable until it has dried. (Washable meaning that you can wash it off, after it has dried it is permanent.) Make sure you apply the glue evenly and to all edges.You may want to use a tooth pick or palette knife to smooth it around, I found I could do this just fine with the nozzle of the glue. *

 6. Using clear acrylic stamps and an ink pad stamp I stamped my phrases on the shirt. Then, to embellish the words a bit I used my rubber brush to create little stitch marks around the words. Just ink the tip a bit and press- it's SO easy!

7. Final step! Allow t-shirt to dry and then wash cold on gentle by itself OR you can handwash the first time to check to see if it loses color or frays. I think it'll be fine but it's always good to do this as you don't want to accidentally color the rest of your clothes. Planned alteration is good, unplanned alteration is a fact of life in my home, but YOU can avoid it with a little carefulness. :)

And that, my friends, was all I did. Not hard, a little bit of time, but very very easy. And I feel like I'm wearing one of my mini art quilts which is pretty fun.

 

NOW- head on over to Shelley's blog and add your OWN creation. I'm on my way there now but here's the link. Thanks for viewing and happy Altering!!!!! 

* My usual is to iron my fabric to heat n bond prior to cutting out the shapes. With the paper backing of the heat in bond still attached, I'll cut out my shapes. This way if I want to sketch out my shapes on the paper as a pattern I can. Usually I just free cut however. Peel away the backing, and then straight stitch around the leaves. Finally, to adhere, you just iron leaves in place on shirt. This eliminates the possibility of the fabric fraying in the wash. This time I thought I'd experiment with adhesives a bit which is why I used the liquid stitch. It seems to have worked great thus far.