Category: Clothes

handmade tee: black knit with flowered placket

handmade tee - black with flowered placket

Time to share another me-made! It’s another simple tee, actually shares the same guts as my favorite handmade blue bird shirt: 2-piece pattern, just a front and a back, no pesky sleeves. For this one I added a colorful flowered placket detail for contrast, and I thought I’d walk you through how I did it.

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blue birdie shirt on the brooklyn bridge

handmade shirt: blue birdy fabric on the brooklyn bridge

I made this little tee last summer, and it’s one of the simplest shirts I’ve ever made. No sleeves to set, just two pattern pieces to stitch together and then hem. Despite this shirt’s simplicity – or possibly because of it – it is my #1 most worn me-made garment, hands down.

handmade shirt: blue birdy fabric on the brooklyn bridge

The ultimate test of wearability for me-mades is simple: does it make it into my suitcase? This shirt passed with flying colors, and has traveled as far as Thailand! But these pictures are from another one of its journeys, when I met my favorite Marie in New York for a weekend of fabric shopping, dessert eating, and general exploring.

What’s extra special is that I bought the fabric on another Marie adventure, at the Türkenmarkt in Berlin. The fabric was cheap, and it’s not great quality, but somehow it became an extremely comfortable shirt with the perfect amount of drape and stretch. After a year of nonstop wear, it’s starting to thin out, especially where the shirt ends up rubbing on my belt buckle, but I think I have enough fabric left for a clone.

handmade shirt: blue birdy fabric on the brooklyn bridge

Trips with Marie always include blog photos for us both, like these where we crossed the Brooklyn bridge and I said things like, “am I walking too fast? is it blurry? how’s this?” and she patiently snapped shot after shot.

NYC garment district - fabric bolts

Of course, I can’t neglect to mention the fabric. Mood was the queen of eye candy, as always (and winner of both our wallets…), but there were plenty of stores, like the one above, that provided loads of inspiration. Finding fabric is a joy in itself, but the best part of this trip was discussing future projects with a fellow crafter. One of us would spot a fabric similar to one already in the stash, and we’d talk through a planned shirt, skirt, or bag… so many ideas, so little time!

For Marie’s much more timely documentation of our New York trip, check out her blog posts: Day 1, Day 2.

DIY Bridesmaid T-Shirts: Sparkle Hens

diy bachelorette t-shirts: hen party

My best friend and roommate-for-life just got married, so, as I’ve been saying, “my life is changed forever!”. I mean, her life changed more, but her wedding is still a pretty big marker on the map of Sam’s Life Events. My roommate-for-life has another roommate-for-life now!

It’s exciting and wonderful. We kicked off the celebration with a bachelorette party for lovely Hannah, the bride-to-be, a few weeks before the wedding, and I decided to make matching shirts for the crew.

My first big decision was shirt color. The wedding colors were dusty blue and cranberry, and since we were visiting a winery as part of the festivities, Cranberry was the obvious choice.

diy bachelorette t-shirts: hen party

For the design, I went simple. I’ve always considered the term “hen party” to be silly and quaint, and I figured Hannah would agree. So the backs of the shirts got “hannah’s hens” in script – all except Hannah’s, whose shirt was emblazoned with her title of “bride-to-be”. The front of each shirt got two small hens, one at the heart and one at the hem.

diy bachelorette t-shirts: hen party

I used my Silhouette cutting machine to cut the heat transfer material. I have the original Silhouette, but the Silhouette Portrait is today’s comparable model. The post for the shirts I made for Katie’s bachelorette has my tips and tricks for working with Silhouette heat transfer, but here’s the big one: don’t forget to make your lettering a mirror image before you start cutting! The heat transfer is cut adhesive-side up.

I used Cricut’s iron-on material for this project because I liked their glitter better – this glitter is silver but has flecks of lots of different colors (Amazon link). I used the same settings I would use with Silhouette heat transfer material and it worked just fine.

silhouette nesting of hen party t-shirts

I was so proud of the nesting on this!

It was a fun surprise for Hannah and my “fellow hens”. One of the girls said, “these are the classiest bachelorette shirts ever!” and – while there’s not much competition, because there’s some really trashy stuff out there these days – I was pretty pleased.

diy hen party shirt - hen detail

diy bachelorette t-shirts: hen party

The bachelorette party was fun and low-key, and the wedding was absolutely perfect. Congratulations again, roommate-for-life – you’re the best!