HomeMade Tales: Calendar Maternity Shirt

As many of you can tell, I've taken a break from blogging about the kitchen, mainly because it's not complete due to a countertop which was cut wrong and John doesn't want me to post any pictures until it is done, thus I am hoping that this blog will satisfy everyone's hunger to read a blog from me :)

A little while ago, I found this really cool idea for a calendar maternity shirt that I wanted to make. I thought that it would be a cute idea to record my growing belly. It's really simple to make, although a little bit time consuming, as you shall see.

Materials needed:

-a long stretchy t-shirt that will fit you until the end of your pregnancy

-a compute with a printer (or you could free-hand your numbers)

-freezer/wax paper (I could not find actual freezer paper, so I used waxed paper, which is pretty much the same thing)

-a couple of sharpies

-an exacto knife

-fabric paint

-a sponge brush

-an iron

The blog that I took this idea from said to make a stencil out of freezer paper, but I thought that was going to take too long. Instead I thought that I could use that iron-on paper, which you just print off whatever you want and then iron it on your shirt. Quick and easy.

Turns out that because you have to use like 2 and a half sheets, that the iron has to be on the paper for too long to make it work, therefore it actually burns the paper to the shirt, basically making it look dirty in between the numbers (as you can see below). So unless you use a tan/brown/darker coloured shirt, I would suggest not to do it this way.

After my failed first attempt, I went back out and bought another $9 shirt from Walmart (very glad I went with a cheap t-shirt!) and started again, this time making a stencil.

I printed off all the numbers that I came up for the first attempt. This was a little tricky to get, but you need to change the page orientation to be landscape and use a large, easy to read font. John helped me get the numbers spaced correctly using a graph. Once you have those figured out and printed, you need to move onto the waxed paper.

Next, lay your shirt out and place the wax paper over it to get an idea how long of a piece you will need (which can be dependent on the shape of the shirt you have). Once you have the piece cut, you need to fold the paper in half 3 times as seen below...

I forgot to take some pictures after this, but once you have the paper folded three time, you need to fold the paper into 5's, which is roughly 2.4 inches if your stencil is 12 inches long. I used a ruler to help me fold them correctly, as I am not very good with measurements. After this unfold the paper and place a cross at each corner (I used a black sharpie) to be a guide of where each number is going to go.

Next start tracing the numbers. Place the paper over the printed numbers and use the crosses to guide you in centering the numbers.

Next start cutting the numbers out! I used a smaller exacto knife of John's, however I know that you can get little pencil type ones, which may be easier for the job, more for the precision of getting around some of the smaller edges.

I decided to cut out all the small bits for the 0's, 4's, 6's, 8's and 9's and placed them in the numbers before painting them so that they were just a big blob. It's up to you how you want to do that. This was a tedious job and again the pencil type exacto may be easier for the job.

Next, place the stencil on the shirt, center it where you want it to be. Just an iron over the stencil to flatten it out and then start painting. I just squirted a bit of paint and used the sponge brush to paint in the numbers.

Once you finish, wait a few minutes until the paint is mostly dry and start peeling the stencil away. I'll be honest, some of the stencil stuck to the shirt, I'm not sure how to prevent that, maybe peeling it away before the paint is completely dry. The tricky part is getting all the little cut out piece off the shirt. I used toothpicks to help in that department, as you can see below.