Graphic tees have been a go-to for my momma style this year. They are so easy to dress up and still feel comfortable. So it is no surprise that graphic sweatshirts hold the same place in my heart as things are cooling down this Fall. I love the simple graphic look of Hello Apparel’s hello sweatshirts, but I felt like designing my own rather than spending the big bucks on theirs. I took Spanish for years in school so ‘hola’ was a natural fit for me. Creative- I know. You can pick any word that you love- but here is how I did it.
Supplies: Basic sweatshirt
Freezer paper
Fabric paint, brushes
The place to start is your local thrift store. You can easily find a vintage pullover sweatshirt for super cheap. I am loving this red color right now so I snagged this one for a couple of bucks.
Because this sweatshirt is definitely vintage, the cut was a little too old-school for me. I decided to loosen it up a little by cutting the neck out of it. Just trim around the original neck and then try on to see if you need to cut more out.
Then I used the freezer paper screen printing method. You can find tons of tutorials for it online. Basically just print off the word that you want in the size that you need. Trace it onto the freezer paper with the waxy side down. Cut out the lettering so that your freezer paper now looks like a stencil. Iron the freezer paper to your sweatshirt with a warm iron. This will melt the waxy side to the shirt to hold it in place. (Don’t worry- it doesn’t leave any residue.)
Now paint your stencil onto your shirt. Because I used white fabric paint on red it did take three or four coats of paint until it was opaque. Then I waited for the paint to dry and peeled off the freezer paper. I set the paint by putting the top in the dryer for about 30 minutes afterwards.
