Upcycled and Embellished Airplane Shirts

This week I have 2 more airplane shirts for any little airplane-loving boy (or girl) out there!

The first one is up- cycled. I have gotten tons of clothes from my aunt, as well as clothes from craigslist and rummage sales. They are perfect for up-cycling or embellishing. For this one, I decided to take a long-sleeve striped TURTLE NECK (come on, they just aren't in fashion anymore) and a plain gray short-sleeve shirt (nothing special) to make a very cute, unique layered long sleeve T.

Here's how it went down:

First, I took the t-shirt and used freezer paper to iron on an airplane stencil. (I hand-drew the airplane, but you could find a clipart picture on line if you'd like). It was super simple to paint blue.

**Please excuse the fact that you can see the white lines in this picture. I forgot to take one without them. :(

Once that dried, I used the bleach pen to draw the lines to the airplane. I put it on pretty thick, and it soaked through. Know that it spreads, so your lines won't be perfect (but hey, that's the fun!)

I let it dry for about 1 hour. I kept checking to see when it was white enough for me. **Side note- put newspaper under the top before you do this, or it'll leak through to the back of the shirt as well!***

After it was bleached the way I wanted, I washed the bleach off and let the shirt dry.

The final step was to cut the arms off of the turtle neck. I measured the shirts (put one on top of the other) and cut off the sleeves so it was about 1 in. longer than I wanted. That's for sewing.

With my sewing machine, I simply sewed the sleeves into place. It took about 15 min. for the two sleeves!

And TAH-DA!! An adorable airplane shirt that cost about 4.00 to make, and my son LOVES it. 

 

 

In fact, I only put it on him for the photo shoot- He'd never worn it before, and he wouldn't take it off! He decided that he liked it that much. :) Luckily it happened to match his pants for the day. 

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The second shirt wasn't up-cycled. It was embellished.  I actually bought this shirt from Old Navy- Just plain blue polo. 

But I had a vision!

I used freezer paper to paint on the airplanes:

After they were dry, I again used the bleach pen to add lines:

 

As you can see, I also painted on white on each airplane with fabric paint and a paint brush. Using a black fabric marker, I outlined each section as well. Finally, I sewed on buttons. 

 

Killian has yet to try this one on.. so I don't have any pictures yet. But I'll put one up as soon as he does.

And that's all for today- two different airplane shirts with a little work and creativity. :)

Airplane Sweater- A Gymboree knock-off

I saw this airplane sweater at gymboree this past spring, and fell in LOVE with it. However, it was 25$... and being frugal, I decided I could make it. (The one above is my version).

So here's how you do it:

1. Go to Walmart (or goodwill) and get a plain zip-up Sweater: $7.00

2. Take out some old fabric that you don't need. On a piece of Freezer Paper, draw a picture of the airplane. Then, using an X-acto knife, cut out the airplane. Iron it to the piece of fabric. Use fabric paints to paint it.

3. Cut the airplane out, and cut it in half. Then, use iron-on adhesive and attach it to both sides of the sweater. 

4. Either hand sew (like I did), or use your sewing machine, to sew around the airplane. I used yellow embrodery floss, because I thought it looked cool.

5. Sew on a button

6. Show off your adorable kid. :)

New Blog- Matching T-shirts

I decided to start a new blog, so I could separate my blog-diary with my projects that I've done. I'm going to try to post 2x a week with a new project... but we'll see how it goes with school starting up soon.

This post is going to be about some of the T-shirts that I've made for my 3 nephews. They are all very close in age (3.5, 1.5, infant). My sis loves dressing them the same... but it gets expensive. So I made her a few matching t-shirts. I got the t-shirts from Walmart for 3.50 each. I used Freezer Paper (by the aluminum foil in Walmart)... It's super easy. You print off (or draw) what you want on the t-shirt. Then you trace it onto freezer paper (Or you can print it right on the freezer paper if you cut the freezer paper to 8 x 11). And cut out the design with a Xacto knife. Iron the freezer paper onto the shirt (YUP! It sticks on there great). Use fabric paint and paint onto the stencil! Very simple. With this design, I had to do 2 stencils, because I wanted the fins to be a different color.

 If you use accessories, it adds a cute touch. I used a buttons for the eye of the fish.

It's pretty simple. I've found that the more you practice, the better you get.