DIY shirt

Now before I begin my how to, I have a short story to tell. First off, I've always wished that my boyfriend and I could find a sport that we enjoyed watching together. You know, like football or basketball, both sporting events that we attended as high schoolers. One Monday evening it hit me... we have a sport but it's certainly not one that I expected or what I really meant when I said any sport with do. Perhaps you've heard of WWE and perhaps you are of the mind set that it is not a real sport. I would agree with you there and that's probably why I like it so much - No one is actually trying to hurt anyone else and when someone does get hurt it's rare and accidental. Anyway, so this Friday (yeah, tomorrow) WWE Live is coming to the Portland Rose Garden and my boyfriend (by the way, his name is Jeremiah) and I have often talked about how, finances permitting we would go. Most likely due to Jeremiah's overall excitement when watching WWE one evening at his father's house (another reason I probably enjoy watching it with him; his reactions are the best part), his father went ahead and got us all tickets! Trying to contain myself, I began mental preparations for what we were going to wear to support our favorite wrestlers. Now comes the tutorial bit because I literally have no money so making shirts was the only way our WWE gear was going to happen.

Pre-project

• Look through what others have done to get some ideas
• Make sure you have a game plan in mind and not just wing it as you go (I've found that this is a quick way to waste good material) 

 

This is the shirt that I would've bought so I knew I was going to try and replicate it

However, I like that this one was a tank top (both shirts are for the same wrestler)

Materials:

• 1-2 shirts you are okay with destroying
• 1 shirt that you know fits comfortably
• permanent marker
• chalk pencil or other marking tool 
• some sort of light box (ex. window, light in a box, etc.)

I just so happened to have these two lovely shirts

Instructions:

1. Iron (duh) all 2-3 of the shirts (scrap shirts and comfy shirt)
2. To your scrap shirt(s) you're going to cut off the sleeves and neck line. If using two shirts, to have different front and back colors, you're going to also cut each shirt in half.

3. Taking your comfy shirt, lay it out on your scrap shirt and trace with a chalk pencil. If using a different front and back, be sure that you're tracing the right side of your comfy/ model shirt.

If using a racerback shirt, be sure that you're tracing only the back straps for the back...

...and only the front straps for the front

4. This step is cutting but several things before you do that: *If you can, save your bottom hem line (it'll save you work later) *If you can't save any hem lines, keep your seam in mind and *it's better to measure twice and cut once than measure once and ruin your entire piece. Okay, cut along your traces.

I'll admit, I was concerned I did it wrong but all turned out well in the end

The front portion looked a little more normal

5. Taking your shirts, right sides facing, you're going to pin along the sides and the tops of your strap. I've noticed that shirts have a tendency to curl so pinning for this project is especially important.

My red shirt was cooperative but my black shirt would not yield

6. Sew along the sides and the tops of the straps you just pinned, first in a zigzag stitch, then back again in a straight line.

I included my machine so you can see the setting that I have it on to do the zigzag stitch

Here's what it should look like once you've finished both stitches

And you have a shirt! That's right, if you want you can be done because in all reality, your shirt is fully assembled and can be worn to whatever event you prepared it for.

However, if you're like me, you don't like raw edges and would like to hem everything up all nice. Well, then continue reading...

 7. Taking a raw edge, fold inward for a shallow seam (approx. 1/4 inch) and pin (remember, your fabric will most likely want to curl on you)

This is what the outside of the shirt should look like...

...and here's the inside

8. Now, I discovered that my sewing machine came with a nifty needle that sews 2 straight lines at a time. If you don't have one, that's okay, you'll just have to sew it twice. I suggest starting at spots that will be hidden when worn, such as the arm pit.

The nifty two string needle

Here's what it should look like when you're done, inside shown on top, outside shown on bottom (note: I used 1 red and 1 black string)

Once again, once you have all your hemming done, your shirt is complete. However, what kind of fan would I be if I only wore the colors. No, I needed to go all the way in support of my favorite wrestler (Daniel Bryan) and Jeremiah to support his (Macho Man Randy Savage; unfortunately he passed away in 2011 but Jer still wanted to represent).

Instructions for image transfer:

1. Taking the image you want to transfer to your shirt, make sure that it's just what you want, where you want it to go, and how big of a statement you want it to make.

Big, front, and center!

* If you have an image that you want to use but that image is more like a picture of someone, don't worry. Take your picture into Microsoft Word, with your picture selected click format picture, and there should be an option to adjust coloring. You may have to mess with it a bit but for the picture Jeremiah wanted, I chose black and white, and then worked on sharpening it and removed the background.

What he originally wanted -> After 45minutes of searching; OMG how cool is this -> What he finally decided on

2. Next, you're going to position your shirt on top of the image, on top of your light box. Now, your light box can be as simple as taping it to the window on a bright day or as complex as this craft light box from instructables. I went with what I had which happened to be my scentsy candle warmer inside a spare fish tank... yup.

It was a small bowl so I could only do 1/3 of the image at a time

*Take your time positioning your shirt so that it is just right over the image because, again, better to do it slow and right then rush and ruin your project

3. Now get to tracing. I used a non-permanent marker to initially trace my image.

First lines down... EEEkk (I was getting pretty stoked at this point)

I kept the original image open throughout to reference back to when I couldn't make out the traced image

Almost all the way done, just have the bottom of the beard to finish

And there you have it, pretty good, huh!?

Jeremiah's shirt at this point in the process

4. Now taking your permanent marker, go back through and make that picture permanent!

The "Respect the Beard" band kind of reminds me a Geordi's visor

Half way done!

5. Once finished, iron over your image and allow to dry for 2hours. The ironing will make your image last a smidge longer (or so I hear) and the drying is so you don't smell like you've been huffing markers. After the 2 hours (or right away if you're as impatient as I am), your shirt is complete!

At the very end I decided to add the little "yes!" because that's his thing... He says, "Yes! Yes! Yes!" like he can do it and no one is going to tell him differently

Jer wanted Macho Man's hair to be like that on my shirt so I went ahead and free handed it (I was feeling especially confident with my skills)

And there you have it, our lovely WWE Live shirts. Jeremiah says that he likes our shirts better than the ones we would've bought because now they're entirely personalized to us and no one else will have one quite like it. We're both crazy excited to be going. Tune back in on Saturday for a double posting day: One post will be more on working out and the other will be pictures of us in our shirts at the event. Oh, I can't wait! Until then dear readers, live long, prosper, and respect the beard!