Since I saw these shirts online, I’ve totally been in love,
but I knew that I was never going to buy one or be able to afford it in my
budget—but I knew I needed it in my life, so I decided to make my own!
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| Popular heart hole sweater via Ali Express |
I’ve made two of
these shirts and I really like them! I made a heart hole shirt over a year ago,
and it was really easy, so I did it again for the Harajuku Day 1 year
anniversary using a different shape and different material for the shirt!
Here’s how I made each one:
1. Deciding placement
You want to make sure that the hole is in
the right place and isn’t too big or too small for your liking! First, put your
shirt on and make sure you know where the top and bottom of your hole is going
to be—you can either mark it on the shirt or measure it with your fingers and
then mark your finger measurement on a piece of paper.
2. The Shape
You want your shape as perfect as it can
get, so take a piece of paper and draw your shape—its good to remember that if
you are going to decide to give it a finished edge by folding over the edges
and sewing the border of the hole, make your shape smaller than what you want,
so you can account for the fold! There are a few ways to give it a finished
edge though, so if hand sewing isn’t your style, or you’d rather sew a
different kind of border, it’s all good! For both of my shapes (a heart and a
cross), I folded my piece of paper in half along the middle of the shape then cut
along the lines of the half shape, so the other side was exactly the same.
Then, cut the shape out, place it on your shirt, and then pin it on in the
middle of the paper. This might cause some bunching on the paper and distort
your shape, so try your best to flatten it out.
3. Time to cut!
Underneath your paper, make a small cut in
the shirt so you can put your scissors into the fabric and cut your way to the
outline of the shape. Make sure you aren’t cutting both layers of the shirt,
because we only want the hole on the front! Hold the paper down as you cut
through along the edge, so you get as strait and accurate line as you can. Cut
the whole shape out and remove the fabric. It’s alright if your lines aren’t so
strait, since we are going to sew the outline of the shape!
4. Hand Sewing
If you have a more curved shape such as a
heart or a circle, you can fold the edges underneath and hand sew the border to
give it a clean, well made look. I did that with my heart hole shirt, and I
really like the way it looks! I used a small back-stitch—it did take a bit of time, but it was worth it!
For my cross shirt, it has more square edges, so I decided to forgo that method
and instead do a blanket stitch around the border of the hole, to make sure
there would be less fraying, and just to look nice!
If you really dislike hand sewing, no worries! If you’re using a material that isn’t too silky or isn’t fraying that much, you can use an anti-fray glue around the edges! It will keep the shape looking nice and clean, without having too much of a stiff look!
If you really dislike hand sewing, no worries! If you’re using a material that isn’t too silky or isn’t fraying that much, you can use an anti-fray glue around the edges! It will keep the shape looking nice and clean, without having too much of a stiff look!
And now you have a really cute shirt!! For my
cross shirt, I put another translucent material behind it, which I just secured
with a very small amount of fabric glue laid very thin on the inside of the
shirt. There’s a lot of cute twists and different things you can do with your
shirt, so have fun expressing yourself!
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| Heart hole shirt with back-stitch border |
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| Cross hole shirt with blanket stitch border (feat. Creepy Kitty store owner Maria L. on right) |
