Jodorowsky's "Santa Sangre" T-Shirt

Are you prepared for a day when BOTH OF YOUR ARMS ARE CHOPPED OFF? Probably not! That's why you need this instructable.


You can celebrate a bit of the weirdness of the film, Santa Sangre, by Alejandro Jodorowsky, by wearing around an equally weird shirt. The film centers around a christian cult that worships a martyr whose arms were chopped off, then the cult leader's arms get chopped off herself and she makes her son puppet her arms around for her, "Whose Line is it Anyway"- style. After watching the film, you begin to realize that losing both your arms is just an accident away, so why not be prepared!

This is my first time sewing with a machine, so it is a quick simple sewing machine project for beginners!


Side note: I propose a mini-challenge for others to make their favorite movie (or other cultural artifact) into a T-Shirt (or other appropriate fashion accessory)! My caveat is that the article of clothing should be fundamentally altered.

Meaning, don't just put a graphic onto your shirt, change it to fit the theme. It can be very simple. My shirt just has two holes in the shoulders where people can put their arms through when yours have been chopped. Another example would be instead of making a Wicker Man shirt that just says "Wicker Man" on the front, or just has a pic of Nic Cage, maybe make a shirt that is FILLED WITH HUNDREDS OF BEES. That would be cooler :)
If you actually make one that meets these requirements, ill give a pro membership to the first cool project i see!

I wanted to really nail how the arms on the robes in the film look, and I turned to my favorite tool, the laser cutter! It turns out that felt laser cuts REALLY WELL! A normal laser cutter will tear right through it and leave nice clean cauterized edges. On a 30 watt epilog cutter, i think for this simple vector cutting I had about 100% power and 40% speed.

I got a couple of different squares of felt just from a local fabric store. Quite cheap!

Before doing this, plusea taught me how to do simple sewing operations (like make a straight-ish line in a peice of fabric). I figured from there that that was pretty much all you needed to know about sewing.

But it turns out it gets a bit more complicated!
In order to sew a peice of felt onto a 3D tube of fabric (the T-Shirt), I realized at the last moment that you can't just put the whole thing through because it will stick the front to the back (problem 1). On top of this, you needed to be able to keep the design flat (so it doesn't crinkle) and in the same place (problem 2).

For problem 1 I couldn't find a better solution than putting the bottom of the sewing machine into the shirt itself. This got a bit confusing at times, but it was alright.

For problem 2, the proper way to do this is to use something called "fusible webbing."
I didn't have any fusible webbing around, and decided to try to wing it!

Approach 1 (Cardboard and Pins)
I cut out a flat piece of cardboard from a cereal box. Then I put this inside the shirt, and pinned the design in place. From here you can sew right over the pins.

Approach 2 (Spray Adhesive) - best option
This approach worked a lot better. Give a light spray of adhesive to the felt, and then position it on the shirt in the proper place. This was a lot easier to deal with, and I didn't have to rip out weird bits of cardboard afterwards.

Once temporarily attached, then sew outlines of the design in place. The fingers are the trickiest part. I learned quickly that when you want to change the direction that the machine is sewing, you should rotate the fabric while the needle is in the down position.