Stenciling Shirts with Fabric Paint

Stenciling is one of the greatest things ever created.  I started about 3 or so years ago.  It's nice because you can make custom shirts with things that you want.  I like making these as gifts for people.  I can't find the original tutorial from 3 years ago, but this is a good one from crafty 'lil thing. 

Some good stencil sites are: spraypaintstencils.com, flikr.com, google.com and look under images, or look up already made tshirts from tshirt sites and copy and paste the images.

Freezer Paper- You can find this in the foil, plastic wrap, paper plate section of your grocery store.  I think I got a big roll from Walmart that I'm still using 3 years later. 

Exacto knife- I got mine at Walmart for $1.47 from the craft section.  The first shirts I did was with the razor cutter thing from the tool box...the one you can cut carpet with.  Yeah, it was crazy because I didn't really have the good control to make the small details, but the shirt turned out well (of course that was 2 hours later of cutting out the stencil!)

Freestyle- Of course you can always freestyle your shirts- you don't need a stencil if you don't want.

Fabric Paint- Since I'm lazy and don't want to make a trip to A.C. Moore or Michael's (it's about a 15 min drive) I just buy the dimensional paint from Walmart.  It works pretty well, but if you can get the regular fabric paint from the craft stores that works better....at least for the white.  I've noticed the white is darker in the regular fabric paint over the dimensional- but the dimensional projects still look good.

Shirts- I go to A.C. Moore and buy their Hanes 50/50 shirts (I don't like the Jerzees from Michaels- not as good quality).  They do a good job with the paint.  Plus they are usually on sale for around $2.50 or so per shirt.  They come in all colors and sizes.  If I'm lazy I'll just go to Walmart and buy their shirts for about $3-5. They work well too. 

Editing Image- Using the Paint program on windows is very useful. You can copy the picture from the website and resize, rotate, invert colors, erase things you don't want, etc.
After I'm done with the picture in Paint, I put it into Word and can add any text if I need to. I use WordArt to insert text.
Cut out freezer paper to tape onto the regular piece of paper to go through the printer.  Print out your image on the freezer paper then untape it from the other sheet.

Painting- dab on the paint with a foam brush.  After you cover it all make long even strokes going the same direction over the whole picture.  This evenly distributes the paint.

Drying- use a hair drier to speed up the process.  Once it's dry, iron the picture with a wash cloth on top to "seal" the paint.

Here's the most recent project. It didn't turn out as well as previous projects...I think it's because
1. I was in a hurry
2. I prewashed the onesie (it made it kind of fuzzy)

This is the printed stencil I found off of Flikr.com.

I ironed it onto the onesie, painted on top of it with a foam brush, and have pulled part of the paper off already.  I don't let the paint dry- I've let it dry before and the paint did not have a nice neat edge.  I also pull the paper off and rip it so I am less likely to let the pulled-off parts touch the shirt.  You can't reuse the stencil so might as well rip it in pieces as you go along.

I didn't like the bodyguard saying to I did a rough trace of this new phrase on top of the computer screen (when I'm lazy and don't want to cut out the 8.5x11 inch freezer paper size I just trace it with pencil).

This is with all of the papers pulled off.  I used a little bit of white fabric paint to detail the eyes (see next pic).

Here is the finished product with added red paint for the signature Max mohawk.  This took me about 2 hours- I hour to cut out the stencil and another hour to iron, paint, remove paper, and make little detail fixes.

I've made shirts from Bob Marley and All Blacks New Zealand Rugby to the Nintendo game Star Fox- the possibilities are endless! 
My family had a Doctor Who party for my nieces 8th birthday.  We all had to have Doctor Who shirts, so here are some examples of shirts that were made.  And yes, you can call us nerds.

Soft Baby Shoes with Leather Soles

I made these about 2 weeks ago.  They were a lot easier than I expected.  I used this tutorial from Family Centered Life.

I went to a 1/2 off sale at a thrift store (Value Village) and bought a large soft leather suede skirt "on sale" for $1.25. This will provide a lot of bottoms for these shoes.  I've made 3 pairs so far.  These make great baby gifts.

Amount of time to sew and cut: 1-1 1/2 hours
There were two hard parts for me:
1.  Figure out how to make a button hole with my machine (I've only made one button hole about 2 years ago, so I couldn't remember how to use the button foot.  Once I reacquainted myself it was easy).
2.  The length of the elastic for the finished product.  The first time it kept slipping off Iwalani's foot so I had to unpick it and make it smaller.

Number of times to unpick: 2
I forgot to flip the shoe the inside-out way before I sewed it and the length of the elastic was wrong.

Girls dress from a man's button up shirt

I got this idea from my friend, Katie B.  She showed me a site with a pic of the finished product and a link to a tutorial from another site (I need tutorials- my brain does not function without a kind of pattern I can see and work with).  This tutorial is from Made.

Amount of sewing time:  3 1/2 - 4 hours (had to make it sporadically since I had to give David a hair cut, feed Iwalani, pick up Kainoa, and make lunch for Kainoa and her friend)

Number of times I had to unpick something: 3  (elastic band got twisted, I forgot to sew the casing for the sleeves, and I put the waist band too low)

I used one of Kainoa's 4T dresses for a pattern.  I just did a rough sketch with a pencil of the outline on top of the button shirt (the shirt was a large).

I used the sleeve measurements from the tutorial and it worked well.

I used 1/4" elastic in the neck and sleeves and used 1/2" elastic in the waistband (because I didn't have any more 1/4".)

I don't know where she got the peace sign from.  She has been doing that a lot lately.