Camping T-shirt Tutorial

This “I Love Camping” T-shirt tutorial is absolutely adorable and so easy to make with the step-by-step tutorial!

Stop by our house and this is what you might overhear: Kids “is it time to go camping?” Us “no.” Kids “how many more sleeps until camping?” Us “lots.” Kids “like one more sleep?” Us “no, like fourteen more sleeps.” Kids “so, in one more sleep?” Us “no!” Seriously, we love camping!

So I decided to create these fun t-shirts for the boys. To highlight their love for camping {obviously}. Did you see our fun Smore’s T-shirts from last week too? ***Update – I have created more of these shirts and added them to my shop. ***

Camping T-shirt Tutorial:

Great for parties or classroom units with a nature theme, be sure to add these printables to your lesson plans.

I used red and blue t-shirts from the Children’s Place {with pockets attached}, coordinating red and blue polka dot fabric from Fabricland and Tulip fabric paint. Here’s what the process looked like…

I began by cutting a design out of paper and placing it on the shirt to get a feel for the positioning of the camper etc.

Then I cut out a rectangular piece of fabric to create a reverse appliqued camper. This is a really cool technique that I have used before in these Soccer T-shirts, these Rocker T-shirts, this T-shirt Refashion and this Flower Pillow {to name a few}. It’s important to make sure that the piece of fabric is larger than the image that you want to applique.

Next I pinned everything together. I had three layers; the paper camper, the front of the t-shirt and the piece of coordinating fabric {which was right side facing the wrong side of the front of the shirt}.

Using a straight stitch, from the right side of the front of the shirt, I sewed the camper onto the shirt. I had to check every once in a while to make sure that I wasn’t catching the back of the shirt.

Then I tore off the paper design.

And, being careful not to cut through the coordinating fabric, I cut out the image of the camper.

Finally, using my Cricut and some freezer paper, I cut out and ironed on the wording. ”I” and “heart” are 2 1/2 inches high and “camping” is 1 inch.

I used Tulip white fabric paint as a base coat on all of the images and then sponged on Tulip glow-in-the-dark puffy paint afterwards.

I used a crumpled up piece of plastic warp to give the images a worn look.

Here’s the finished blue version.

Details on the red version.

I also used the Tulip glow-in-the-dark puffy paint to highlight a bunch of the polka dots on the camper. Big time Mommy bonus points for glow-in-the-dark t-shirts huh!?!

Here’s the finished red version. And plenty more photos of my cute guys loving their new shirts….

Here are a few more Freezer Paper Stencilled projects: Smore Smores t-shirt, Rocker t-shirts and Canada Day T’s. Linking to these fab parties! Thanks for reading my blog.