T-Shirt Designing

My daughter had a Party at the weekend.  She chose to have a craft party similar to last year.  Her choice again was to design T-shirts.

I bought some plain white cotton T-shirts from Asda (Walmart) they were in packs with blue T-Shirts, but they were still the cheapest option.  I am sure the blue ones will still come in handy!  I already had plenty of fabric pens, as these are used regularly in our household.  I did buy 2 more pens as some do get used more than others.  I have fabric paint, but I find this is too messy for the children and pens are very easy to use.

They could choose what they wanted to put on their t-shirts, I already had some printed 'Hello Kitty' sheets for them to trace around.  I had requests for 'monkeys, ladybirds, and moshi monsters.  I simply found some pictures online and printed them out on plain white paper. The children then placed these inside the T-shirts so that they could trace the picture onto the T-Shirt.  Please note that when drawing onto T-Shirts, always have some card underneath, so that the pen does not leak through to the other side of the T-Shirt!

Once they had all finished designing, I left the T-shirts for about 10 minutes to make sure the ink was dry. I ironed all the T-Shirts so that the colour was heat sealed to the cotton T-shirt. This stops the colour from running when you wash them.  The children also designed on the back of the T-shirts and around the neck and arms.

Below is a photograph of all the party girls, modelling their finished T-Shirts.

Below is a mini Tutorial
Here is what was needed:

• Plain Cotton T-Shirts (white preferable for tracing!)
• Fabric Pens (assorted colours)
• Card or cardboard (to stop pen leaking through)
• Printed Designs (to trace from)

Here are the basics steps to designing your own T-Shirts:

• Place the cardboard inside the T-Shirt
• If tracing also place that inside the T-Shirt
• Draw your design onto the T-shirt
• Once dry (about 10 minutes) iron over the pen design

It took just over an hour for them to complete the T-shirts, once they were finished they then decided to listen to some music and do some dancing.  As take away gifts I had made them all some personalized printed gifts, instead of the normal sweet goody bags. I printed off some lovely place mats and bookmarks and some craft gifts to make at home!

Does anyone else want to share with me what crafts they have done at their children's parties?