How to make your own t-shirts with unique style

Here I am as always, dedicated to showing you ways to make your own t-shirts that are going to be totally different than what all the peeps in the streets are sporting. I randomly found an article online from a Pilipino newspaper a little while ago, and it totally inspired me. It's not that it's such a fascinating story really, but I liked the idea, and I think that a person could do a lot with it.

The article is about a fashion designer who had made it his mission to create clothing which distinctly represent his Pinoy culture and tradition without seeming overly formal, out of place or contrived. One method that he used to make the clothing more modern and natural and less feminine than the traditional embroidery was photo silk-screening. He could use traditional imagery, and modernize it with his means of production.

Anyway, it just made me think of the endless possibilities for beautiful traditional emblems or symbols from different cultures which could be stylized or adapted and printed on shirts or whatever else. Depending on the design, it could look great as a repeat pattern, or simply one stand-alone image.

Places you could look to for inspiration…of course the internet’s always great. Also the library or book store will probably have books about textiles, or Latin, Indian, Polynesian, Caribbean or African culture, and you can probably find shapes that you could photocopy or recreate somehow in your own way.

And how about a museum? If you live in a big enough city, you might even be lucky enough to have a textile museum at your disposal. Those places are wells of ideas, seriously. But any museum with cultural exhibits might have hand-woven, or painted or printed cloth from Asia, Africa, Latin America or elsewhere that just might tickle your fancy and get your creative juices flowing. After my last trip to the textile museum, all I wanted to do was massive repeat pattern printing and then make stuff out of the cloth, or even just hang it on my wall. They were showing an amazing exhibit featuring cloths made of bark in many developing countries around the world. The patterns were mostly abstract, very symmetrical and intensely beautiful.

Food for thought. There are so many ways to generate ideas that will help you make your own t-shirts that are original and fun. If you want to take that idea further, feel free to leave a comment. Of course, once you've chosen and image and made it yours, you can decide whether you want to print it yourself using one of the Do-It-Yourself methods I've written about on this blog, or send your design to Spreadshirt or one of the other online t-shirt makers.