iLoveToCreate Blog: Petal Tee for Spring

Hi everyone! It's Cheri from I Am Momma Hear Me Roar. I think I am more anxious for spring to come than I have ever been. I even decided it was time to work on some spring clothing. Today I'm going to show you this top I just made for spring. I call it the "petal tee." It was fun and easy to create.

I bought a plain t-shirt and then got out my Tulip fabric paints. I didn't have purple, so I used red, blue, and white to get the colors I wanted. I used my Tulip fabric paint brushes. I also used some lavender-colored organza, but we'll get to that later. I put freezer paper between the front and back of the shirt so the paint wouldn't bleed through.

I started by mixing my paints to get lavender. Then I brushed it onto the shirt in a random pattern. I made the shapes like petals, but I didn't worry about them lookig a certain way. They are all different shapes and sizes.

Then I kept mixing paint, creating different shades and adding more petals to the shirt.

Lastly, I took my darkest shade of purple and added some water to it. I painted more petals and these petals looked more like watercolor.

See? They are much more faint, but they give the shirt some dimension.

Once everything was dry and I had heat set the paint with an iron I cut out little petal shapes from my organza fabric. These petals must be sealed so they don't fray. All you have to do is hold them close to a flame and they will melt a bit. Rotate the petals until the entire circumference has been melted. (You could also use a knit fabric, which doesn't fray so you wouldn't have to worry about it. I wanted something more light and airy so I chose the organza.)

Then I sewed them onto the shirt, layering them over the painted petals. (If you don't have a sewing machine you could sew them on by hand. There weren't that many to sew - probably 10-15 petals.)