I recently got a new obsession: The Hunger Games. I know, ya'll are probably sick of the paraphernalia, hype, and controversy surrounding the book/movie series, blah, blah, blah...but seriously. The books are amazing.
And the movie just made my month. It was very close to the book.
Anyway, in preparation for going to see the movie, I decided to make myself a tee shirt. Here is how I did it }
{You will need}
A tee shirt (I used a black one from Goodwill)
Yellow/gold/orange fabric or another tee shirt
Red embroidery floss
Needle and thread and/or a sewing machine
A pattern for the design
}STEP BY STEP{
1. Start with your pattern.
I used the mockingjay symbol from the Hunger Games. I found an image on Google and printed it off as a full-page photo.
I printed off three copies. One, for reference, to get an idea of the full picture. The second one for the the circle. And the third one for the bird itself. I found that it looked better and more layered by breaking the design into two or three pieces. 2. Assess the materials.
This oh-so-complicated step consists of one thing: deciding where you're going to put the design. My tee shirt had a bit of a scoop neck, so I decided to attach the design to the back center of the shirt.
3. Cut out your bird.
Cut out both the circle and the bird from their respective pages, then pin the paper to the yellow/gold/orange fabric. Carefully cut around the paper outlines. Unpin the paper. And, voila, you have a yellow circle and a yellow bird!
[The yellow tee shirt I used was very thin, so I doubled it up when cutting out the bird. I only did a single layer for the circle, though.] As you can see, the fabric version of the mockingjay is not nearly as cool as the paper copy. To simulate the same shadows, etc., here's what I did. I took a pencil and drew a few lines (along the wing, the beak, and the tail). Then, when I was attaching the bird to the shirt, I followed those lines with the sewing machine, thus attaching the bird and embellishing it at the same time. Yes, I know, I'm brilliant.
4. Attach the design to the shirt.
I wanted my shirt to look sort of vintage and rustic and not crazy-insane-fan-made (you know the spray paint creations I'm talking about). So I used black thread in my sewing machine to attach the yellow mockingjay to my black tee shirt. It showed up really well.
I sewed two lines around the circle, because it was wider than I intended. This left some fabric for a sort of frayed look, adding to the vintage feel.
It was really easy. Trust me. If you don't own a sewing machine, you could always hand-sew all of it, or even use fabric glue, though that might not hold up well for multiple wearings.
After the circle, I attached the bird using the afore-mentioned technique of adding a design to the bird using the sewing machine. A little more difficult, but give it some time. It's worth it.
5. The arrow.
You could leave your shirt like that. It would look perfectly fine. But I like embellishments, so I decided to add the arrow that the mockingjay is holding in its mouth. I first cut out my paper arrow counterpart and pinned the two tips to the shirt to get a vague idea of size and direction.
I grabbed a large-eyed needle, red embroidery floss, and got to work using a basic back-stitch. It was easy! Except that...I kind of got impatient and the arrow turned out a bit crooked in the middle. Oh well :)
And that's it! I do regret that I didn't put the design on the front of the tee shirt...but I still love it. And you could use this same type of method to create almost any emblem or symbol from your favorite books/movies.
FINITO
p.s. Several people said that I should make more and sell them. One, I regrettably don't have enough time, and two, in order to mass-produce them, I'd need more uniform materials and money...and I pretty much just raided Goodwill for this project. lol!