31 Days Series: Sugar skull shirt

Well, I went all out on this first project. Don't get spoiled and expect this level of awesome every day, you will be sorely disappointed.

I made a shirt. Out of scraps. But...I think it came out great!

First I found a picture of a sugar skull I liked - black and white, since I really just needed the most basic of outlines. I got Josh to set up the projector and traced the outline onto a large sheet of paper I had taped up on the wall.

Then I started gathering supplies; lace, ribbon, anything with sequins was fair game. (Don't judge my tracing skills, or lack thereof I should say.)

Once I had a basic plan, I taped a larger piece of black lace over the skull, ironed it just slightly to straighten out both the lace and the paper, and cut that out.

Then came the real hard part. Figuring out how to best make the 'face' (if a skull can really have a face...) I played around with a bunch of different pieces, different materials, trying to figure out what I liked best. I cut teeth and the nasal cavity opening out of this silver sateen-like fabric I had laying around, a rose out of some fabric I bought to make pajama pants out of a few years ago, and then the other pieces from a really thick, beautiful lace & sequin trim. Once I had everything cut, and arranged how I like it, I used heat bond to attach it to the skull form.

Finally, I heat-bonded the whole skull to the t-shirt, and then went over the whole thing with a zig-zag stitch to ensure it stays together. (I put way too much work into this for it to lose teeth in the wash or something!)
And here's the finished product!

I'm pretty proud of this. It took about 4 - 5 hours overall, but I spread it out (I actually started this at 2 am last night, which should explain the crappy quality of the first few pictures, and just finished less than 30 minutes ago) and managed to finish in less than 24 hours. I hope you enjoy! Leave a comment if you make one!

(See a list of the other 30 days in this series here.)