How to Make Cheap Stencilled T-shirts

Today I am making dragon shirts for a birthday party. Kids will be randomly sorted into red and yellow teams, determined by the colour of the shirts they find in their paper mache dragon eggs.

To make the shirts, I found a dragon graphic I liked on the internet, then adapted it to a simpler design that would be easy to cut out. I reversed the image and flipped it so it would suit our purpose better, smoothed out some lines, make it taller etc. until I had what I wanted. Then I adjusted the image to the size needed right on the computer screen and traced it out onto printer paper (because my tracing paper has gone missing since our move). Then I put a sheet of clear plastic (binder cover, but a page protector or any other thin but somewhat rigid plastic would work) and traced out the image using a fine exacto knife (actually, my DH helped with this part).

Once the stencil was cut, I laid out the first shirt and slid a sheet of newspaper inside to keep the paint from soaking through to the back of the shirt. Then I put the stencil in position and used a small sponge to dab on black tempera paint. Once the paint has set and dried, the shirts will be ironed to make the paint permanent. For the first washing, they should be washed separately, but after that, regular washing will be sufficient.

Making shirts this way is inexpensive compared with using ink-jet transfer paper or fabric paint. It is also permanent once ironed and will not melt in a hot dryer or bleach away in the sun (at least, purple and black colours won't--I haven't yet tried red in the sun).

A word of warning though: never sell items that have a "borrowed" image from the internet. The shirts I am doing are for personal use only and I will not be making any money from them. Even though I have edited the image so that it is quite different from the original, it is still close enough that it would constitute unfair usage were I to profit from it. If you want to sell shirts made like this, you will need to make your own image or obtain permission from the owner of the image that you wish to use.

Click here for instructions on how to make the dragon's eggs.

Side note: I did pre-test the tempera paint stenciled t-shirts that I posted here on the blog earlier, but my most recent batch ran when I washed them. I suspect I did not use a hot enough iron this time, or it could be that I accidentally used washable tempera. If you try this one out, you may want to try out a piece of test fabric first.