Process of T-shirt Making

Here's the shirt! I'd say it wasn't too bad for 1.5 hours and my first time :) 

I am playing in a volleyball tournament today and our team decided to do an "I <3 ____" themed outfit. I don't have one so I decided to attempt making one. I was brainstorming ideas for what to put and it felt out of place doing a location...since I'm not buying this shirt as a souvenir. I narrowed it down to either volleyball or cats and decided on the cat because it has more personality and a cuter silhouette. :)  Approximate production time: 1.5-2 hours. I'm hoping the paint will dry in time! The bottle says 4 hours. Barely made it!

Here's a step by step visual of how this shirt came to be!  I looked for a font on Word to model my letters after. I used the Gungsuh font in case you decide to make one too. It seemed close to the font found on the traditional I <3 NY shirts.

1. I wore the shirt and placed painter's tape to mark of the boundaries of where I wanted the design. The key is to do it while wearing it otherwise you might be disappointed with the placement once you've finished. Once I laid the shirt flat on the table, I straightened out the boundaries and used a ruler to center the image.

2. I cut drawing paper (it's thicker than regular printing paper so it works better as a stencil) to fit inside the boundaries. I lightly drew lines to divide up the paper into grids of where each letter would be so that it would be balanced. Then I sketched the design while looking at the font I found on Word and an image of the cat I saw online.
*If I had had more time or were to make another shirt, I would have printed out the letters instead of hand drawn them. That would ensure exact font accuracy, font size, and even thickness of lines.

3. I cut out the design with an Exacto knife

4. I taped on the stencil, being careful to tape down intricate spaces to make sure the stencil didn't budge while painting. While holding down the edges of the design, I carefully sponged on the fabric paint. (Instead of buying fabric paint, you can also buy fabric medium to add to regular acrylic paint. For me, it was cheaper for me to just buy 2 bottles of fabric paint than to buy the fabric medium. If you are using lots of colors and already have acrylics, it may be a better choice to go the other route.)

Here is a close up of the finished product! If I were to redo it, I would make sure to cover the edges of the paper with tape so that paint doesn't accidentally go outside of the boundaries. You can see some splotches on top of the "I" where that happened to me. You live and you learn :)

This proved to be a fun project! Maybe it'll come to use in the future...we'll see :)
Thanks for reading!
-M