diy shirt – Planet Plan-it!

This is a favourite song of mine and I’ve passed it on to my daughter. I’ve been looking at “Mommy and Me’ outfits but they’re all about Queens/Princesses or “this kid tires me out” and I thought I could find something better. I went looking around on Pinterest and found this. It was exactly what I was looking for. Shipping across the border can be very expensive and after the Elmo shirt I thought this would be easy enough to try.

I used the yellow shirt that I recreated from a store-bought youth tee. Michaels didn’t have a yellow shirt in my daughter’s size so I made one myself. My shirt is a plain gray cotton v-neck shirt.

I used the vinyl sheets I bought on Amazon for my Elmo shirt project.

I picked out some fonts I liked on Cricut Design Space and found a sun shape on the program for the top. Then I set the Cricut to work!

Set up the gray piece to cut while you work on the yellow chunk. I cut out the small square piece so I could use the rest of the yellow for something else later. Can’t have waste! Weed all of the negative space. The weeding tool is amazing for teeny font pieces.

Now to weed all the inner-font pieces.

Poke and lift. Try not to poke stuff not meant to be poked.

All done the weeding process. I highly recommend doing this at a table rather than bent over on the floor.

The gray sheet is all cut. Hard to see unless you catch a glare at the right angle.

Cut out just the part where your picture is.

Start weeding the negative space.

Almost done. Just the inner-font pieces.

I laid them on top of the shirts to see how they looked. I probably could have made mine larger. My daughter’s shirt is a better size.

Starting with my shirt, I spread it onto the ironing board so it was only the front being ironed. I eye-balled the placement, laid a towel over the vinyl and ironed away. I pressed fairly hard while I tried to concentrate the heat on the plastic square.

You can see the parts that haven’t adhered to the shirt yet.

Just checking to make sure I iron the right section.

Took a couple go-rounds.

The sun still needs some heat. It hasn’t quite separated from the plastic yet.

I tested the corner to see if it was ready. Looks good!

Tada!

I turned the shirt over and ironed the back.

My shirt is done!

I laid the gray piece down to see where it should be placed.

Cover it up with the tea towel to iron.

Not even close. This shirt took a long time to adhere. Maybe because the font is so skinny or maybe the vinyl wasn’t as nice. Who knows.

I took the tea towel off and just ironed on the plastic. My arm started to hurt!

Still not sticking.

Eventually it stuck and it turned out great! They look great on the table. Can’t wait to try them on!

Step 1: Make sure you have all the items you need before beginning. Here’s what I used:

Bucket (I will use a wider bucket next time)
A hanger for each item you’re dying
Rit dye in a colour of your choice
Gloves
Towel
A system for dipping your clothes in stages. I used two music stands, a piece of doweling and string.
White clothing to dye. Cotton seems to work best.
*Not pictured-I ended up using another bin for drips

Step 2: Set up the hanging system. I liked how easy it was to adjust the height when using the music stands. I added tape where the doweling sat to add some traction.

Step 3: Next, I tied two pieces of string onto the doweling. I taped it in place so it wouldn’t spin.

Step 4: Tie the other ends of the string to the hanger. Now you can turn the doweling to raise or lower your garment into the dye.

Step 5: Place a towel or drop sheet underneath. As soon as I’d gotten all set up, the thunder started. So I took it all down and tried again in my basement laundry room.

Step 6: I didn’t get any pictures of the bucket being filled. I started by boiling water in a kettle. While I waited, I added a 1/2 cup of salt to my bucket. Once the water was done, I measured 5 cups of boiling water to the bucket. Then I added 15 more cups of hot tap water. I stirred it a bit. Then I added half the container of liquid rit dye. I used denim blue.

Step 7: Here’s where I made my first mistake. The shirt could only go this far into the dye because my hanger was wider than my bucket. No biggie. I ended up liking how it turned out. The first chunk was a quick dip then I rolled it up for the second section, which dipped for 1 minute.

Step 8: The last section was left for 5 minutes. Once it was done, I slipped it on a new hanger and left it to drip on the drying rack with an empty bucket underneath.

Step 9: Rinse in cold water. I held it by the hanger and washed it in the shower. I didn’t mind having the dye drip because we’re due for a new bath. It did slightly stain it, even after I used a magic eraser. Rinse until it runs clear. This took some doing for me.
Step 10: Hang to dry then put in the laundry on a warm wash.
I also dyed 2 other shirts. The first one was my daughters and it was 50% cotton, 50% polyester. The second one was my husbands and it was 100% cotton.

My shirt was last and it didn’t turn out very well. The label says 65% cotton and 35% polyester. It has a very different texture than the other two shirts and I paid quite a bit more for it so I was bummed. It turned out more purple than blue and it was a more subtle line between sections.

Here is the final result on my daughter. As you can see the blue dye ran into the white in the wash. I assume this is because I was lazy about rinsing out the dye in cold water before washing in the machine. I really like the end result. It was a fun project I was able to mostly finish during a nap. It wasn’t too messy because I had prepared everything beforehand.

Tag: diy shirt

Sunshine t-shirts

Dip-dye t-shirt