Monday, March 26, 2012

Make Your Own Downton Abbey T-Shirt

If you're a fan of the PBS show Downton Abbey this shirt is for you.  If you haven't seen this show yet, you're missing out, and this shirt has a spoiler...sorry!



I made this one for my husband, and yes he likes the show.  What a catch, right?  I know I'm a lucky girl.  The best part?  It only cost five dollars to make.  The shirt was three dollars on clearance and I already had the paint that cost about two dollars.  It's Tulip brand fabric paint.  I wish I had drawn this myself because it is pretty awesome, but I found this design online on flickr (via pinterest).  You can get your own copy here or here.  I would not try selling this shirt without contacting the owner of the image. 

To put this on a t-shirt, you need to use the freezer paper stenciling technique.  Print out the image, trace it onto freezer paper, and ever so carefully cut it out with an X-ACTO knife.  Because there is a bit of shading in the original image, you need to use artistic judgement in simplifying your tracing just a bit.  Make sure that the eye area especially still looks like an eye.  I also simplified the tie area a bit.

If you have a dark shirt and want to use light paint, remove all of the sections of freezer paper that you want to be white.  If you have a light shirt and plan to use dark paint, then you will cut out the opposite of what you see in this picture. Iron the paper onto your shirt and paint on as many layers of paint as you need.  This took three layers of white.

If you want more detailed instructions for freezer paper stencling, check out this previous post or this tutorial.