Design Your Own Tees: Techniques and Inspiration to Stitch, Stamp, Stencil, and Silk-Screen Your Very Own T-Shirts

by Jennifer Cooke

Sought after for her innovative use of color and pattern, professional t-shirt designer Jennifer Cooke has created 20 do-it-yourself projects--many can be completed in under and hour--for turning your classic tees (and accessories) into colorful, bold, graphic personal statements.

Combining basic sewing, hand-printing, and screen-printing techniques with stylish wearable projects, Design Your Own Tees gives you the tools to stand out in the crowd--whether you choose to re-create the looks shown or to adapt the techniques to express your unique artistic vision.

Use thread, ribbon, and fabric to play with texture through decorative machine stitching, hand embroidery, and applique. Experiment with found objects and stamps to create pattern through potato and block printing and stenciling. Choose your favorite doodles and images to enhance with color through screen printing.

Colorful photographs of the finished projects plus step-by-step instructions with easy-to-follow diagrams will soon have you wearing your art on your sleeve.

Genres: Nonfiction

144 pages, Paperback

First published August 31, 2010

Reviews

[Candace · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you want to learn how to silk-screen your tees, then this is the book for you. Unfortunately that is not what I was looking for from this book and is why I gave it only 2 stars. There was tons on silk-screening, a little less on stamps and stencils and even less on stiching (which is what I was after).

I did like the "Machine Wave" shirt. You basically take your sewing machine and a shirt and sew a bunch of lines down the middle of your shirt using all the different decorative stitch options that your machine has. Pretty simple.

[C · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book mainly focuses on screen-printing, but I did find some useful advice on block-printing that I hadn't read before. I didn't find the designs very inspiring, but maybe they're too abstract for me.

Side-note *I met the author at a Renegade Craft Fair in Los Angeles and she was very cool.