Anyone have ideas on decorative t-shirts?

[soccermom]

For work as a playground aide, with grades 1, 2, & 3, I wear t-shirts and sweatshirts with decorative stitchery or painted designs on them. The kids enjoy the ones that have cute animals, flowers, or sports themes on them. My only problem is that they are harder to find and when I do find them, they are expensive.

Clothing tends to get stained alot when working with 200 little ones, so I'd like to try decorating some myself. I've done some painting and stamping on some for the holidays and they enjoyed them.

I'd like to try other ways to decorate them besides using paint. Does anyone have any ideas?

[sunshine]

Hand embroidery- simple designs, like letters/numbers- simple flowers or cartoon animals, vehicles.

Applique - use coloring books for patterns

Iron on transfers-- use your own pictures and computer printer.

[sixfreds]

You can get a yard of farbic you like and add the iron on stuff to it (comes in sheets) and then cut out shapes or the design and then add iron it on to a tee... You can add a stitch around to help hold it and to give it a cute sewed on look and you can add some paints or whatever to it..

Eileen

[sunshine]

BTW-- applique is a good way to "hide" stains.

[AmyMCGS]

Those iron-on transfers that Sunshine mentioned are great-- you can print any graphic from your computer, and then just iron it onto a cheap T-shirt. Just be sure and wash them in cold water if possible. I've made DD holiday shirts this way.

[soccermom]

What great ideas! I especially like the idea of hiding the stains!
I think I'll be quite busy over the summer working on these ideas.

Donna