T-shirt making.

Now I've finished my paper and fabric samples, it's time to work on my t-shirt. I got a couple of plain white t-shirts from a local store. I got a large size purposely as I need to get the urban, hip hop style look. A lot of urban style clothing is based on a baggy look. That's the reason I've chosen this size. So now I have my t-shirt it's time to get started with the marbling dying of it. I had to take a dying bucket and fill it half full of water. As I was working with a larger piece of material I needed to use little more ink. So I got a larger pipette so that I could place more ink into the water. I stuck with the colours i loved from the samples which were red and blue. I then dipped the t-shirt into the inks in the water, lifted it out and hung it out to dry. I couldn't wait to see the results once the fabric had dried.

Once my t-shirt is dry and ironed I'm going to transfer writing on the front of it. So my next step was to try this process out onto a sample piece of fabric. A lot of the words being printed onto t-shirts at the moment are words the people of the young society are using. So I chose to use the word 'Doll'. This word is relevant to my life, it's a word that I use in my vocabulary all most everyday. So I wanted to put my own little touch on my t-shirt. That's the reason I chose this word. Seems as I was printing this word onto fabric I decided the best way to do this would be by using transfer paper and a heat press. I then got onto a computer and typed the word 'Doll' into the program word. As I was printing this word onto fabric it would have to be reversed, so I highlighted my word and used a mirror image tool to reverse it. I then printed it onto transfer paper, placed the transfer paper onto my sample piece of fabric face down which was calico fabric, and put it under the heat press. The sample looked great. I also tried another form of transferring letters onto fabrics. I used transfer paint to write the word 'doll' onto paper. I then splashed some ink around the word for a graffiti effect. Again i used bright, bold colours. I printed this onto a synthetic fabric. I wanted to try out a different type of fabric than i used before and see how it looked. I used the heat press to transfer the word onto my sample piece. The second sample looked great but I chose the first sample to actually print onto my t-shirt. I thought this looked and worked better, that's why I chose the first sample.

When I went back to my t-shirt, it didn't turn out as I'd hoped. It looked completely different to my original sampling on fabric. The ink had faded quite a lot once the t-shirt had dried. So I got a really light purple pink colour on the top. Even though it didn't turnout like my initial samples, the t-shirt really grew on me. I actually liked the colours and marks that had been made onto my top. I think the reason the ink hadn't took to the t-shirt as well as it did to my sample fabrics was because I was using the ink and water on a larger scale. Next time I use this process on a t-shirt I won't use as much water as it must have diluted the inks a bit to much. I may see better results then.
I ironed my t-shirt, printed the word 'Doll' out again onto transfer paper, placed the transfer paper with the letters on onto the top face down, and put it through the heat press. The results were great! The printed t-shirt was fab! I'd achieved the look I wanted to get. I will definitely use both of these processes again on t-shirts.

I photographed the sample that I'd heat pressed and my finished product. My DOLL T-shirt.