Make Your Own T-Shirt

Video Transcript

"I'm going to show you how to make a t-shirt from ready to wear. You don't have to take it apart, you can trace it directly onto fabric but if you're not comfortable with that, you can use pattern paper. We're going to first choose the t-shirt that you need to make, some tools which includes marking chalk, tracing paper, tracing wheel and anything else that will take to cut it out and finish it up. I'm going to make a pattern from fabric of this t-shirt. The first thing you do is lay it down, make sure that the t-shirt is laid straight, there are no wrinkles. Then make sure that it doesn't move, you gotta take straight pins and you gotta pin each section to a pinning board. That so it will not shift while you are tracing at your pattern. Now, that we got it pinned down, we gotta take tracing paper. Tracing paper has chalk on one side so you want to take the paper, lay it down on and under the t-shirt, and then we're going to use something called a tracing wheel. We just simply go outside of the t-shirt and all areas that needs to be traced. Now, we're going to drew up those lines that we just drew to make sure they are straight and you can see them before you cut it out. I'm using a chalk marker. Now, chalk marker will transfer loose powder and it will transfer all of the marks we just did in a straight line. Now, you gotta take a ruler to see what your seam allowance is going to be. Typically, t-shirts have very narrow seam allowances, half inch is good enough or you going to quarter inch. Depending on whether you're going to use a overlock machine or sewing machine. So, I can take my fashion ruler and draw a stitching line, single lines rather. So, or if you're good at eyed balling it, you don't have to do any of that. So, you just make sure that you got a good, straight edge, to do what you need to do, to make this correct. You take this tool, this is a rotary cutter but you need a mat to allow for this sharp edge to work. So, where I'm havin' my seam allowance, I'm going to cut this right from this board, and you're done with the base part of the t-shirt. Now, you have to do the sleeves. Okay, now that we're ready to sew, I'm going to use a serger or better known as a overlock machine to sew this t-shirt up. You'd be amazed how quickly this will go. I'm going to sew the shoulders first, install the sleeve, install the band of the sleeve and then do the side seams all in one motion. And then we'll complete the top. We're going to match up this top of the sleeve to the body of the t-shirt and then we're going to stitch it all in one motion. We're almost done, the next thing to do is to sew up, put the sleeve on the other side, sew it up and hem it, and then you're ready to wear. The serger machine is the quickest way to make a t-shirt."