Quick and easy t-shirt hacks for kids (and grown-ups!)

I decided to customise a multipack of plain white t-shirts rather than buying individual designs – not only was it cheaper but it’s also fun to personalise a t-shirt so you know you’ve got something completely unique.

Embroidered rainbow

I am not a great sewer, but I can manage the basics and as Ez had recently been doing some sewing projects that used back stitch, I thought I’d show her how she could use that stitch on a t-shirt.

She’s a big fan of rainbows and unicorns, so we just used six colours of embroidery thread to sew a rainbow motif. I drew the outside arch with tailor’s chalk, and then just followed that to do all the following arches.

Iron-on patches

The lovely folk at Evermade sent me some of their new greeting cards with iron-on-patches a few months back, and as soon as Ez spotted them she was keen to make them her own. She picked her two favourites and then I simply ironed them onto the plain white t-shirt.

Embroidered slogan

Ez is rather partial to a slogan t-shirt, and ‘go with the flow’ has been our family motto for the last five years. Now, I’m first to admit that my embroidery skills here could be better, but at least you can read the words – drawn in tailor’s chalk first, and then embroidered using back stitch – and Ez was thrilled with it, which is what counts! A larger, two-word slogan might be easier next time.

I thought the t-shirt looked a little bare, so I decided to add a scallop detail around the neck, which I think has worked really well. I’m going to copy this on a t-shirt of my own as it was super easy to do.

All three t-shirts took me an hour tops and I had a very chuffed eight-year-old very keen to show off all her new tops. I will definitely be stealing a couple of these ideas for some plain t-shirts of my own, and they’d make really good-value homemade presents, too. I’ll definitely make sure to come back and share my next batch of t-shirt hacks soon. I’m just off to trawl my Pinterest ‘for words to live by’ board for some slogan inspo….