Make Your Own T-Shirts

A good T-shirt is a wonderful thing, isn't it? Finding the right places to buy them used or new is great and there's an art to that too, but learning to make your own t-shirts is a thrill that goes beyond the great find. You made it! You can walk proudly around town, chest out and chin high knowing that you made that scrap of cloth on your torso beautiful. That can mean a lot of things. Eventually I'll have blog posts featuring all the different ways to make t-shirts with lots of specific pointers.

Do it online. There are lots of websites now where you can send in a design and have them print it for you. That's great too. You can still feel creative without having to physically produce anything. You're the brains behind the final product. Some of those sites only work with text in a select variety of fonts. You just enter in a slogan and have some limited control over how it looks. Some other t-shirt making sites have a supply of designs and you can search through their database for images and put those and even combinations of them on a shirt for yourself. And there are some websites where you can send in your own photos or Photoshop images and they will have it silkscreened, which basically means the sky is the limit on your design possibilities. And with some of these companies you can actually sell that design to their customers and earn money each time someone buys it. My favorite is Spreadshirt.

Iron-on. For those of you who actually want to make the thing, with no go-between, the simplest and fastest way is by using a iron-on transfer. The iron-on method is also the one that requires the least amount of equipment and learning. It has its downsides too. It can rub or peel off with time and in the dryer. But nobody's perfect. You can even buy iron transfer paper and photocopy it at a copy shop, or better yet...print right onto it from your own computer. And you can adjust the image using a Photo editor like Photoshop or something similar to play with the contrast, but of course, I'll write about that in much more depth in a future entry.

Silk screen. Learning how to screen print is really fun, and is probably the highest quality and most permanent way to get an image onto your shirt. The process is much more involved, and it will take more time, attention and supplies. For me, all of that is more reason to be super stoked about it. It feels more like a project and it's just that kind of thing that leaves me feeling like I really DID something. And once you learn it, you're going to want to print on everything you can get your hands on. If you're thinking of starting your own t-shirt business, I think silkscreening is definitely the way to go.

So far we've only talked about ways to get an image onto your t-shirt. There are of course about a million other ways to make a t-shirt your own. You can work with dyes and bleaches using techniques which are totally simple or intricate and complex to give you exactly the look you're going for. You can sew things onto the shirt, or you can take a shirt (or two or three) completely apart and reconstruct it in many fabulous ways.

This blog is part of my new project. I want to explore the many ways you can make your own t-shirts and highlight them here with tips, techniques and how-to's. I'll also talk later about tools you'll need for the different methods, where you can find them and how much they'll cost you. Please check back often because I'll be exploring all of these areas in time. I also welcome comments and suggestions. If you have ideas you want to share, please feel free.