Crafty Natalie
18Apr/126

DIY Star Wars Shirts

I know I'm a little late to the game with these freezer stencil shirts, but better late than never huh?

My nephew turned 7 on April 1. My sister decided at the last minute to throw him a little family birthday get together this weekend. Since my nephew had asked for a few Star Wars items, I decided that for his little party, I'd make him a Darth Maul shirt. I knew his older brother would probably want one too, so I figured I'd better make him one with is favorite character!

Instead of hand tracing and cutting out a pattern, I used the trace option on my Silhouette Cameo to cut out the stencil. If you are looking for cool Star Wars themed stencils, check out this site! There are tons of other great stencils- Disney and  Hello Kitty included! Unfortunately the Darth Vader stencils no longer exist on that site, but don't worry, here's another great site that has them!

I know there are tons of tutorials out there for freezer stencil shirts, but here's my quick version on if you'd like to use the Cameo to cut out your stencil!

If you have a Cameo and haven't used the trace option yet, I found this video that helped get me acquainted with this feature. Basically, save your file to your computer and import it into your Silhouette Studio. Click on the "Trace" option in the upper right corner, then click "Select Trace Area." Once you select your area, unclick the "Hi-Pass/Low-Pass" filter as you'll only be working with the "Threshold" option. Once you've made your stencil to how you'd like it, you'll then remove the original picture from the mat screen. If you have any unnecessary writing on your file, you can erase it at this time. I cut out freezer paper and put it onto my mat (waxy side down), setting it to the cardstock setting (I originally tried it on the Medium Print Paper setting but it didn't cleanly cut out all the pieces).

After removing all of the filler pieces from your stencil, iron on the freezer paper onto your shirt.

Lay cardboard in between the shirt to avoid any bleeding from one side of the shirt to the other! Using a foam brush, gently brush on fabric paint. The paint bottle says to let it dry for 4 hours, but I let mine dry overnight, just to be on the safe side!

Once it's dry, remove the freezer paper, and ta-da! All done, and super cool!  :) (It's also a good idea to heat seal it-lay scrap fabric over it and run an iron over when it's completely dry).

And here is the Yoda shirt I made for my oldest nephew! (I ended up using two coats of the white fabric paint for this shirt. I let the first layer dry a bit before doing a second layer).

I love the way the Yoda shirt turned out! So much so that I ran to H&M today to grab my son a blank t-shirt to make him one too! My niece also requested a pink Darth Vader shirt, so I'll be making those by this weekend as well! I'll post an updated picture of all of them in their Star Wars shirts when I get a chance!