Let's Decorate a Doll Shirt part 1

 

Watch the video here.

This is the first video in a short series, I'm going to call it a “mini-series” on decorating doll t-shirts. I have so many ideas that I want to share. I hope to do either 3 or 4 videos now and then maybe throw in a couple more at a later date.

I do want to talk about one thing before we start this adventure. There is one very important warning I want to make sure you are aware of before you do any of this. That warning is that any of these methods could have a risk of bleeding color onto your doll. That is a risk we run not only with decorating our fabrics but also with using anything other than plain white fabric on the dolls. I have seen dolls that have been stained from commercially purchased doll clothing. It can happen anytime you use any colored item on the doll. So keep that in mind. That being said although I have seen the result of it happening I have never had it happen to any of my own dolls and I use a lot of colored fabrics and I love to decorate my doll clothes. I don't want to scare you off from decorating your doll clothes just make you aware that there is a possibility however tiny that it could stain a doll.

To prepare for this I did sit down and sew a bunch of plain white doll t-shirts. I was able to pick up 2 XXX Large t-shirt blanks at Hobby Lobby and easily got 6 doll size shirts out of each one. Hopefully I am set for a while anyway.

For our first shirt today I did a simple applique from some patterned fabric. I fell in love with this butterfly design the second I saw it (it is from Hobby Lobby if you want to try to find it too) and knew it would be perfect for this shirt. I used the same ultra-hold Heat 'n Bond that I used for the shirt in our sewing series. For this shirt I wanted to show you a slightly different way to do basically the same thing. This time the design was provided right on the fabric ready to use. When looking for fabric look for designs that are about 1 ½” about 2” in size. Since I used the ultra hold I didn't need to do any sewing on this one. I did decided to use just a touch of fabric paint for the antenna on the butterfly. I just didn't want to try to cut around them and felt this would look better. Feel free to use the ones on the fabric if you wish.

This method of decorating would also be perfect if you can find some character fabrics with appropriate size designs. There are a bunch of Disney fabrics in the fabric stores as well as lots of fabrics with common cartoon characters on them. You could create some really cool looking doll clothes using those too. 

 

 

Our second method is one of my favorite ways to create designs on doll t-shirts, alcohol markers. I picked up this set of Bic brand markers a while back but you could use the ones from Sharpie, the ones from Dollar Tree or the fancier art ones from the craft/art store (like Copic brand) just look for the word “permanent” on the marker. Also test it with rubbing alcohol to make sure it will work. It is best to do this on a scrap of the same fabric your shirt is made from to be sure how it will re-act on the shirt. I find that some markers work very differently on different fabrics.

For our last shirt this week I used mostly the brush on fabric paint. This is really easy to use because it already has the additive in it to make it work on fabric. If you want to use regular craft paint you will need to add a textile medium to it.

Since I am not an artist I just did a quick abstract design. Then I added a squiggle with a gold metallic fabric paint. I did a similar design on a skating dress for my daughter years ago and it was a hit at her ice rink. I ended up making several more for her friends.

So those were the decorating methods for this week. Which one is your favorite? Which one will you be trying first?

Be sure to come back next time for some more ideas.

As always thank you so much for taking the time to watch the video and read the blog. It means a lot to me. I would love it if you could pass on the links to your friends that also do doll stuff.