How to make a portrait on a t-shirt

Today I want to talk about a really cool t-shirt that my 10 year old daughter did for my boyfriend’s birthday.

 

Using an embroidery tracing pen (Amazon affiliate link) and tissue pattern paper she first traced a photograph of him. To get the outlines more prominent I used the Stamp filter in Photoshop before I printed the image for her, but she ended up using both a print of the actual photo and the outlined stamp version.

Then she transferred the drawing which turned out trickier than expected. It took both a lot of heat and some steam to get the purple colour to transfer onto the fabric.

Using a couple of textile pens (with different tip sizes) she then filled in the purple outlines. After that I helped her set the colour with a hot iron and rinsed away the purple lines. The colour bled a bit, probably because we started to rinse straight after the ironing. My experience with textile painting and printing is that the colours should set for a while in order to be fully permanent.

The end result. It’s looking even cooler when you see his actual face too, but I’m giving my somewhat camera shy partner a break tonight.