Crafting for Zombies

I don't really know any zombies (does anyone?), but my sister plays Humans vs. Zombies at her college practically every weekend (okay, I might be exaggerating about the frequency, but in my defense, I sort of tune out the zombie talk). She is pretty obsessed. I know Nerf guns and bandanas are involved, and that it's kind of like tag.

So for her birthday I decided to make her a t-shirt! Her birthday was actually at the end of September, but I couldn't find the t-shirt I had bought.. And then when I got ready to make it finally, I couldn't find my craft box!

Guess where it was, guys?

In my closet.

Which means that I put it away, and didn't think to check where it was supposed to be. Logical! So I continued my Ugly Betty marathon binge while I crafted.

One of the many lifelong skills I learned in joining a sorority is how to craft a t-shirt. If you don't know how, an easy way is to use Heat n Bond, shown here!

I think the most fun I had in making this was sketching it out! I haven't done any crafting or sketching or anything in so long! I did paint one painting around May, but since then.. Pretty much nothing. So I loved drawing the letters and that little zombie guy. I stole him from the HvZ website and kind of took some liberties, but I think he turned out pretty cute.

As you can see, I have tons of fabric that I will probably never use, but I wanted to be simple for this one (basically I want my sister and her friends to think it's cool) so I went with black for the letters and orange for the heart. I think I remember her squad or team or something using orange as a color..? I could be totally wrong about that though, haha! But also with the shirt in green, I didn't want to go with Christmas colors.

So if you're following along and wondering when I'm going to get to the next step, here it is! Trace your letters (or picture or whatever) onto the Heat n Bond paper - backwards! It has to be backwards otherwise it will be wrong on your shirt (or pants or blanket, etc). Don't cut out the letters, but cut around them so you've got a square/rectangle of Heat n Bond to iron onto your fabric. Put it on the "ugly" side of the fabric - this didn't matter for the black but did for the orange! It makes more sense once you've done it once or twice and you think about the process.

Once you've ironed the paper onto the fabric, cut out the letters/shapes. Peel off the back of the paper (now do you see why we needed to go backwards and use the ugly side?) and place your stuff in the right spot on the shirt. Now iron!

Sometimes (like when making sorority shirts with Greek letters that I'd wear a lot or that would get passed down to future sisters for years and years and stuff, I would use puffy paint around the edges to make sure everything stays on through washing, but for this one I just went without. I'll just advise her to hang dry instead of putting it in the dryer. I was going to use the puffy paint to draw the zombie guy in the heart, but then while searching for black, I found a black fabric pen and decided that that would work much better! And I was so right!



So here it is before and after the drawing - I wasn't sure it was going to look right so I almost left it off, but I sent her a picture and she loves it, so I'm glad I decided to add it!

This wasn't a very exhaustive tutorial, but I am happy to answer any questions you have about crafting your own t-shirt! You can buy fabric, Heat n Bond, plain t-shirts, and anything else you might need at Walmart! (Or craft stores!)

Happy crafting!