Personalized Nautical T-shirt And Dog Bandana Tutorial!

 

As promised I can now share the gift I made for my bff! In the last year she adopted an adorable white lab Dixie and bought a boat! I thought that she and her first mate needed something to let everyone know they mean business out on that boat.

 

 

I knew I wanted to make a Captain shirt and dog bandana that said First Mate. While I was at Target buying the t-shirt I came across some fabric paint and thought that would work. As I was leaving the aisle I saw some fabric markers with all the other Crayola markers. I was intrigued because I had bought some for Christmas on clearance for my little cousin's but hadn't seen them in the store since then. I figured they would be easier and cleaner than the paint so thought I would give them a try!

 

Here is what I started out with to make the shirt and bandana. 

• tshirt
• fabric remnant
• Crayola fabric markers
• printed text
• rotary cutter and cutting mat
• bandana for measuring (not necessary)

After getting into the creative process I also  used a few things not shown:

• measuring tape
• transfer paper
• iron

Now lets get started! First I measured a bandana I already had for my dog. Our dog has a skinny neck so I added a little bit to the dimensions and ended up cutting a 22x22in square out of my fabric.

 

 At this point I planned to just using my pinking shears to cut the edges to prevent fraying and be done... however, "my" shears were actually some my grandma gave me from her collection and I hadn't tried them yet. Needless to say I doubt she has used them in the last decade. They definitely didn't want to cut the fabric and may have even been a little rusted... time for plan B!

I decided to fold over the edges a half an inch and sew them up so Dixie would have a clean edge showing... only the best for the dog!

 

 I might have broken a needle at this point because I forgot I still had my walking foot on... whoops, live and learn!

 

Now that the bandana was made I was ready to decorate! I used my transfer paper underneath the text I had printed out to transfer the lines to the fabric.

 

I just used a pencil to trace along the letters and as you can see below the text transferred faintly.

I wasn't sure if the markers would bleed through so I then put the paper underneath the fabric and lined it up with the marks from the transfer paper. This gave me even more of a guide for the letters.

I simply drew over the text with my fabric markers and moved on to the shirt! 

The shirt was pretty sheer so I didn't need to use the transfer paper. I just placed the text underneath the shirt and lined it up where I wanted it. I used my fancy martini glasses to hold everything down and filled in the letters with the fabric markers.

I wrote "Captain" on the back and in smaller font "Ahoy!" on the front. I also added an anchor to the front under the text and to Dixie's bandana.

Below you can see the anchor underneath the shirt as I'm getting ready to draw it on with the fabric markers.

Once everything is drawn on, the fabric markers direct you to set the ink with two options. You can iron over the backside of the fabric with a back and forth motion for four minutes. The other option is to put the items in the dryer on high for 30 minutes ALONE so you don't have any ink transfer to other clothing. I tried the ironing on the dog bandana to see how it worked.

 

There was some ink transfer so I would recommend putting a fabric scrap between your item and ironing board cover.

 

 

After experimenting with that I threw everything in the laundry machine and let it do it's thing! If you only have one small area marked up I think the ironing was fine but since I had lots of spaces that would need ironing the dryer method was much easier. I didn't have any ink transfer anywhere in my dryer. I also did the bandana and t-shirt together and didn't see any come off one item onto the other.

 

That's it! I was pretty impressed with the fabric markers. I plan on making my in-laws dogs some awesome matching bandanas with a witty phrase and can't wait to see the dogs in them!

Also, this would be a super easy activity with kids. As long as an adult is doing the ironing kids can go to town decorating all sorts of things!

Do you have any experience personalizing clothing or accessories? What medium do you use, have you ever tried the fabric markers? What design or "theme" would you put on your t-shirt?

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