Bleached Dino Shirt

My youngest is obsessed with 3 things, Batman (well super heros in general), Sharks, and Dinosaurs.  Get him one of those things and you can't go wrong.  This makes gift giving very easy, and also apparel, you always know he'll put on something if it has one of those 3 items.

When Cheri from I am Momma, Hear me Roar announced a little boy tops contest, I knew I had to enter, and I already had the perfect plan that had been swimming around in my head.

I came across an awesome sketch of a T-Rex a while back and saved it in my Pinterest (LOVE that sight, if you aren't already on it, you should be).  A quick pull up for this project and we were off.

My original plan was to draw the dino (simplified, as I was using bleach and not a pencil) with a Bleach pen, I had read all the tutorials, seen all the projects, it was easy peasy.  Well, I got out my bleach pen, attempted to bleach and nothing, it drew fine, but never bleached.  Ugh, no problem, it's old, I'll buy a new one.  So I bought a new one last week and it got set aside till I was ready to use it.  When I went to get it out, I couldn't find it, finally, came across it, it was already open, that's weird, I don't remember that, but since I threw the other one away, this must be it.  Tried it again, still nothing.  Ok, rethink, I need this shirt bleached.  Last month, my mom and I got a book on fabric art and I recalled reading you could use dishwashing detergent to bleach as long as your detergent has bleach in it, pulled mine out and WALLAH!!! it did, now how to get it in a drawing contraption.  I ran to Walmart (I needed a shirt anyway, so it worked out) and grabbed a mustard/ketchup squeeze bottle.  I opted to use the mustard one as my kids don't eat mustard and if it's in the ketchup who knows what they'll try and squeeze it onto to eat.  Word on this, it works AWESOME.  Takes less than 1/2 hour, and this brand is clear, so you can easily see how much is bleached simply by looking at it. I later found my new unopened bleach pen (before I actually started bleaching) but opted to still go this route as opposed to trying the other and hoping it worked.  Dishwashing detergent is also much cheaper you get tons more for the same price.  Now I'll stop talking and actually so you what I did.

Put dishwashing detergent in your squeeze bottle.

I printed out my Dinosaur the size I wanted, then laid him on fabric (a piece of one of my old t-shirts that was stained on the front, mostly with paint, no idea how that could have happened) and outlined around him with a permanent marker just bigger that I wanted the final size to be, this gave me some parameters to draw it in.  I was going to try and trace, but you couldn't see through the fabric, and I'm too lazy to try using a window and causing more steps, so I just went for it.

Using your outlines and picture as a guide, use the squeeze bottle to draw on your object.  This stuff doesn't bleed at all (Target brand, can't vouch for anything else), so only the spots you put bleach on will bleach.

Close up of the clear and you can see the dark and light where it's started bleaching.

After it was bleached  to where I wanted, simply wash it off and wash the fabric in laundry soap, rinse, and dry.  Then cut out your Dino just inside the lines, you don't want the black marker on the final t-shirt.  Then, attach with fusible interfacing (you definitely want to interface knit, or it stretches so bad when you try and sew it you might as well throw the shirt and all your sanity out the window before even trying, not that I know from experience or anything).  

The final product.

Close up, isn't that T Rex so cute, you just want to give him a hug.

Then put him on one VERY happy little boy.

"Mom, I love my Dino shirt".  Ahhhh, that makes it all worth it.

Enjoy! and make sure you stop over at Cheri's to see all the entries.