Fandom T-Shirt

I saw a t-shirt I really liked and decided to "copy" it, (is this plagarism !!?) I just like the confused geek message

Now I didn't want to go to all the hassle of screen printing so decided to do it another way, by using a stencil.

If you wanted to make multiple copies of a shirt however you could have transfer the stencil onto a silk screen and use it that way, I only wanted 1 copy so I worked directly on the shirt

From what I can see this may be a viable alternative to messing around with Photosensitive Chemicals etc

The Photos are a bit small as I took them with my phone, should have used my posh camera for all of them instead of just the finished one

Materials

A T-Shirt (obviously)

Fabric Paint

Paint Brush

A Laminating Pocket

The Image you want to print

A Craft Knife

An Iron

Paper towels

I used google and then using the snipping tool on the computer transferred the image to a piece of A3

This image is fairly complicated, but then again I am a complicated kind of guy!

Because I only had A4 Laminating Pockets, I cut the image to fit inside

This worked pretty well as all the writing went in one and the picture in a second one

You could use just one half of the pocket if you want to be a cheapskate, however the image holds in place better inside the pocket

I used a very sharp X-Acto knife for this.

Hint cut the lines fractionally longer than on the image template to ensure the pieces you are going to remove come out cleanly, it saves a lot of fiddling about later.

Eventually you will get a template like above (this took me about 45 minutes for the whole thing (letters and Dalek))

Rip off one side of the Laminated Pocket position and iron onto the shirt (sticky side down)

At this point you COULD iron this onto a silk screen if you wished and make multiple copies

I put a sheet of A3 inside the shirt, to prevent the paint soaking through and used Permaset Fabric Paint which is water based and solvent free (not a deliberately informed or eco-friendly choicejust what I found in the shop) The Paint cost about $13 NZ but I have done 3 shirts so far and hardly used any!

I used an Artists Brush (because it was the first one that came to hand) any old brush will do.

I slightly wet the brush to thin the paint and make it easier to spread, and did 2 coats to get good coverage.

The instructions say to iron on cotton setting for 3-5 minutes -- so I did!

With a simple template (and a bit more care than I showed) you could probably remove the template and re-use.

I destroyed mine!

I will probably give it another iron and hand wash the first time, but others I have made have stood up to normal washing machine abuse.

Hope you like it

All in all it took about an hour and a half to do (probably cheaper to buy one tbh!) but it was raining and I had nothing better to do (just don't tell my wife I said that!!)