How to up-cycle a t-shirt logo

A Retread Threads Edition

         How often have you found a shirt that you love the logo but the size or the color is off? One of our most useful techniques involves taking the logo off one shirt and putting it on a different shirt. It’s a quick and easy solution, plus it gives you a unique shirt that you won’t see anyone else wearing.

Step one: Assemble your tools. (Shirt with logo, shirt to move logo to, Cutting Board, Pins, Scissors or Rotary tool, chalk)

Rotary mats are very helpful if you do not want to cut whatever is under your shirt. 

Step two: Pick the shirt you’d like to use and the shirt you’d like to put it on…color, texture, size. You are only limited by your imagination.

Step three: Chalk off your design. (You can free hand cut but if this is your first attempt, I just wouldn’t.)

Step four: Cut your design out. You can follow the outline of the design or cut an oval or square. It depends on how you’d like it to look. Make sure to leave a little space around the design for the sewing line.

Step five: Pin your design to the new shirt. And sew. You have a multitude of options on thread color, shirt color, design outline.

And just like that, in five easy steps you have an “upcycled” shirt completely unique to you.

You can repeat this as many times and you need to up-cycle your wardrobe or use all those logos you just can not do away with.

      A few tips…Kinds of cotton are easier to sew than silks and rayons. Silks and rayons tend to crawl off your machine. There are fusible backings that you can iron onto your design to give it somebody. When in doubt, you can always baste your design onto the new shirt if using pins and your machine makes things sketchy. For those of you that are new to sewing, Baste means to sew in by hand.

       Don’t throw that old shirt away just because it has been damaged or shrunk in the dryer. Give it a new life and continue to enjoy it. And, nobody will have a shirt exactly like yours. And do not forget you can up-cycle the shirt leftovers into another great, unique item. If there is just nothing left of the shirt when you are done, cut it up for rags.

      I hope this has been of help to you and maybe given you an idea of your own.

Thank you for visiting and come again for another edition of Out Standing in the Field.