How to Custom-Embellish a Shirt

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Lee Meredith, contributor

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This is much better than that boring blue shirt with the white buttons!

Lee Meredith

Using a custom fabric ink color, rather than plain black or white, makes for a more personal print.

Pete Bejarano

You could also do a few lines with different-colored thread for more excitement.

Lee Meredith

This is much better than that boring blue shirt with the white buttons!

Photo: Lee Meredith

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Wavy designs are not that hard, but full-on loops or circles can be tricky and you should go very slowly.

Simple waves are easy to topstitch, but curving all the way around is harder.

For my shirt I did mostly simple waves, but I threw in a couple of loops to add interest. I started at the button band next to the pocket, stitched around the pocket once, then a loop above the pocket, then back around to the bottom, intersecting with the first line, another loop below, and waved down to the shirt bottom.

You could also do a few lines with different-colored thread for more excitement.

So those are the three things I did—I think more than that would make any shirt too busy. And the orange theme ties together all three elements, keeping the shirt from looking overdone.

This is much better than that boring blue shirt with the white buttons!

If you're not into the printing idea, a great replacement would be appliqué! There are lots of great appliqué tutorials on the Web, like this super-simple one by CraftStylish contributor Susan Beal. And instead of machine topstitching, you could definitely choose to do embroidery! Of course, you may also decide to keep it simpler and choose only one or two of the embellishment methods. This project is great for men's shirts, too, but you'd probably want to stick with either only printing or only topstitching for most guys. Or you might find a great shirt that's not a button-down style, so you can stick to just printing and stitching, or whatever you want... The idea is to make a shirt that comes from your crafty heart, so use whatever methods will best suit that purpose!

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Comments (5)

Jennia writes: Great idea!!! Your top stitching is really beautiful. I would have to practice many hours to work as well as you do!
Posted: 12:31 pm on June 18th

sophiecai writes: talented......thanks for sharing
Posted: 11:15 am on February 15th

whimsy_chidori writes: Awsome idea. Thanks for the how to's on sewing loops and swirls. :D
Posted: 11:44 pm on May 7th

popoagie writes: Cool idea. I may make some version of this to jazz up some hand me down men's shirts for my teenage son playing off his personal interests.
Posted: 8:46 pm on January 25th

sigridsoto writes: Hi One of a kind is always the best. You have talent
Posted: 5:37 am on January 25th

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