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Freezer Paper Stencil is so easy, we made this for daddy with a little help from mommy!!!

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Father’s Day is just around the corner, if you need to make a quick father’s day craft with the kids, this “We Love Daddy” with hand prints stencil T-shirt would be a perfect gift for the daddy that he would want to wear it everyday. It is a freezer paper stencil method, the stencil design can be done very fast if coupled with computer and printer. You can either download the stencil pdf pattern I made or create your own, the font I used is “American Typewriter”. If you can’t find freezer paper locally, you can always substitute it with sticker paper, like the one I used on skeleton Halloween costume I did for my son last year.

For those with only 1 kid, I have prepared another letter for you with an “I”, so you can make a ” I Love Daddy” Stencil T-shirt instead. For the hand prints, simply print both left and right hands on it. For those has more than 2 kids, adjust the hand prints position so that every kid has his/her share to touch the daddy’s “heart”. You can always enlarge the heart shape when printing to cater for more hands. Cool!!!

Last year, I sewed a boxer shorts for father’s day and he loves wearing it till now. This year the kids made him a great T-shirt, he sure is one of the luckiest daddies in the world to have 2 consecutive handmade from his loved ones in 2 years and more to come lol…. In fact, seeing him wearing them makes me so happy and dying to make more for him!!! Next year, I have to get prepared earlier for 2 father’s day crafts, one for the kids and one for me to make.

Get the detail tutorial on how-to make this stencil T-shirt with freezer paper after this….

Material:
1. White plain T-shirt (pre-wash)
2. Freezer paper, cut 2 sheets of letter size (8 1/2″ x 11″).
3. Fabric paint or acrylic paint (permanent), black, red, blue and green

Tools:
1. Printer (inkjet or bubble-jet, not laser printer)
2. Craft knife
3. Cutting mat
4. Iron
5. Soft paint brush
6. Paint palette plate or some swallow containers
7. Cardboard as backing to prevent paint from penetrating to the back of the T-shirt

Pre-wash and dry the T-shirt if it is new to remove any sizing added by the manufacturer.
Gather all the tools & materials to get ready for this quick craft.
I used permanent acrylic paint which is good for fabric painting. The texture is a little stiff compare to normal fabric paint but it is fine for this project because the coverage is not a lot and won’t irritate the wearer if he is particular on comfort clothing like my hubby.
Otherwise, you may add textile medium to the acrylic paint to provide softer texture if it is available at your local store [Read instruction on the bottle on how to use it].

Download the stencil design in pdf document and print it with your inkjet printer.
Feed the letter size freezer paper into your printer and print the artwork / pattern on the paper side of the freezer paper.
{the pdf download will either open in new tab or open a small window asking you to save it as file. If you can’t find the saved file in your computer, the default folder usually is in “/downloads”}
{If you can’t download the pdf pattern, probably you don’t have acrobat reader, download the latest version for free, here.}

Slowly cut the letters out with craft knife (place a cutting mat at the bottom to protect your table). If you kids are too young to handle the knife, help them with it. I did it for my kids, for their safety and also for the beauty of the work .

Place the cut freezer paper on the T-shirt with shining side down and position them as you like. Trim off excessive freezer paper so that it won’t block the letters when overlapped. Maximize the coverage area on the T-shirt to protect them from being soil by paint when the kids work on it.
Set your iron to medium heat setting. Press the hot iron starting from one corner, then glide it slowly and firmly across the freezer paper. The freezer paper will bond on the T-shirt. Continue gliding the iron on the entire freezer paper. Pay attention on the edge of the stencil letters and the heart pattern, make sure they are bond to the T-shirt without leaving any gap to prevent paint bleeding.

Insert a cardboard inside the T-shirt and fold the sides and sleeves under it. The cardboard acts as a barrier to prevent excessive paint from penetrating to the back of the T-shirt. It also helps to smooth out the T-shirt to make stenciling easier.

Squeeze some black acrylic paint on a paint palette or a swallow container. You don’t need a lot of acrylic pain for stenciling, so squeeze a little at a time if you don’t have enough to prevent wastage.
Dab the paint with a flat tip brush on the letters.

I let my daughter to do the “daddy” word after I demonstrated to her on the “We” word. Check the stencil to make sure that the paint has fully covered the letters, touch up if necessary.
After finish all the letters with black color, repeat the same to the heart with red acrylic.
Wash the brush and hand while the paint is still wet.

Wait till the paint is about to dry, stretch the T-shirt at the corner a little to free the freezer paper from bonding and slowly peel it off entirely.

A closer look on the stencil work before peeling off of the freezer paper.

It gives a very clean and crisp outline on the stencil. Another thing I love about freezer paper stencil (apart from it convenient and easy to use), the wax on the backing really helps to prevent paint from penetrating through from the paper side. No staining or bleeding happened even my daughter painted them quite wet.

The “We Love Daddy” stencil T-shirt before hand printing.

Brush and cover the whole palm with blue acrylic. Press the palm onto the T-shirt immediately. Acrylic pain dries quite fast, so wash the hand with soap after the print.

Repeat again with a left hand on the left side with another color.
Always, print with darkest color first, and lightest color last.

Set it aside to dry for over night. Laid a clean cloth on the stencil work and press with warm iron. Wash it before before wear.

The kids woke up the next day, the first thing they want to see is this T-shirt… their first “big project” for their darling daddy. See, they don’t even want to brush their teeth and change their pajamas before taking this photo, so embarrassing!!! The kids are so happy with their work and cannot wait to see his daddy wearing it.

I am so glad that my blog’s migration is finally over, phew!!! After numerous sleepless nights fighting against broken links, fine tune the layout (still doing though), adding plugins, widgets, blah blah blah…. I am back to posting again, YAY!!!

As promised, here is my first free pattern for the drawstring bag made from T-shirt yarn, yup, another recycle project for the environment. You can click the image below to get the free pattern link in acrobat .pdf  format.

Before you jump into the free pattern, below are some of the tips on how to get it done.

Switching Yarn Color

The beauty of T-shirt yarn is that you can make a nice adhere joint for color switching. Simple, just glue the 2 ends with fabric glue. I used Clover fabric bond since it is proven to be long-lasting.

Cut the 2 ends in slanting shape.

Apply glue at a length of 1.5 inch. Join them up as shown.

Wrap the outer yarn onto the inner and make it into tubular form as always. Wait for a few minutes for it to dry and you can continue to crochet.

Eyelet installation

We need to have eyelets fit at the hole we made to run a draw-string. Sanwich the eyelet pair onto the hole and make sure that it covers up the hole nicely, not leaving any gaps around.  Hammer the eyelet firmly by using the appropriate tools and fixtures to fit the outer and inner piece of the eyelet to lock into the proper position.

Drawstring

After finish crochet the drawstring, run it through the eyelet holes. Insert a bead at each end and tie a knot to secure the bead in place.

Attach the shoulder straps and it is done!!!! An environmental friendly T-Shirt Yarn Drawstring Bag is born.

Should you have any suggestions on what other things you can made from T-shirt yarn, please share with me, I would be more than happy to try it out!!!

Another tutorial to help save our Mother Earth by turning unwanted items into something useful. This is the yarn ball I made out of an old T-shirt which I have been wearing for 10 years day-in day-out, wash-in wash-out. It finally broke down and tore at the collar and sleeves. Waste not, want not, I decided to recycle it.

In this tutorial, you will need:
1. T-shirts (those without side-seam)
2. A pair of sharp scissors

Place the T-shirt flat on the floor or working table.

We only need the bottom-halve portion of the T-shirt. Cut horizontally from sleeve to sleeve as shown above. Cut away the end border of the T-shirt too. This useful” portion must be plain and free from printing, embroidery and any joints or seams. Any motifs will be too hard for the T-shirt to turn into tubular yarn.

Fold the T-shirt from side to side, leaving an inch allowance as shown.

Cut into strips as shown, remember not to cut the 1 inch allowance. Leave it there as we are going to use this to form a continuous strip.
The width of the strip will determine the thickness of your yarn, but the minimum is 15mm, anything less than this, the process will fail. The width shown here is 15mm.

Finish cutting the T-shirt from top to bottom evenly.

Unfold the 1 inch allowance and it will look as shown below.

The next process is to make a slant cut from strip 1 to strip 2, strip 2 to strip 3 and so on in order to create a continuous strip for the whole T-shirt.

I purposely leave the first strip uncut until I have finished all. No catch, just my preference to show you better how the slanting looks like.

Now, I have a loooooooong strip of continuous T-shirt yarn waiting for the next process.

Next is to turn the strip into a tubular yarn. All you need to do is tug the strip as shown below. Rememeber I told you that the minimum width of the strip is 15mm? The secret is…. if you have anything narrower than this, it will break once you pull.

See, the strip will curl and form a tubular shape after the tug. This process will lengthen the yarn too, which is good, so you have more yarn to work on your project.

The strip has now turned into tubular yarn, from Fettuccine to Spaghetti ***wink***. You can roll your yarn into ball and it is ready for your next project.

HAPPY YARNING!!!
A preview of what is coming up next!!!!

I have finished making the drawstring bag as shown above. Please click here to have a look and you can download the simple pattern I created.

I did some appliques on my baby new footed-pyjamas after being inspired by Lollychops and her lovely bunny templates. I downloaded this, this and this from her blog where she gave us free for hobby use. Thanks Lolly, they are so adorable!!!

I was working on them over the weekend and thought that I should finish them very fast. I was wrong, absolutely wrong in my estimation. I ended up spending 4 days to get them done, part-time, 4 hours a day, total 16 man-hours (or woman in my case …. Getting the picture appliques done is quite fast, slightly more than a day will do. I thought that they were too plain as a baby pyjamas as I always like to think that baby garments should be colorful and cheerful. So I thought to add things around them.

I started off with the Bunny pyjamas, thinking of adding a few embroidery alphabets will be great. I began to embroider “baby bunny” onto it, ohhhh… it is so hard to do. First , I can’t put an embroidery hoop onto the pyjamas to stretch out the material. Without the hoop, it is difficult to get the precise sewing point. Then, the material of pyjamas is problematic as the tension has to be right. I have to redo it a few times. I told myself that it is a good experience and no more embroidery done on stretchy textile.

I moved on to the Bird pyjamas and this time no more embroidery, instead I did alpahbet appliques on it. “Tweet Tweet” was the first words in my mind and some melody notes jingling around will be lovely as well. This particular one was the most time-consuming among the appliqueing on the pyjamas. Look at the perimeter along the alphabets I have to work on….. It really is no joke that we need to exercise a lot of patience when come to craft, and it can easily lead toproject abandoncy :p

The outcome was favourable to what was on my mind, the time and patience spent was worth it. I love the look of the Bird Pyjamas than Bunny Pyjamas as it is more colourful and joyful though it took a little longer to finish it.

I did the same to my Mushroom Pyjamas. I love the two butterflies flying around the colourful mushrooms. I got them together with the mushroom templates downloaded from Lollychops’s blog.

I bought the pyjamas in slightly bigger size. Now, all I have to do is wait until my baby is big enough to put them on Weekend is approaching again!!!! Sigh, time is really flying fast!!! My baby is 6 month-old and is about to taste his first solid food.