Syfy Hatter Shirt How-To
Hello! I just finished my Hatter shirt. It's been a long and lonesome road to get there, with a lot of expensive trial and error, but hopefully you will learn from my mistakes :) There's a small troubleshooting section at the bottom, but I try to cover most issues in the tutorial itself.
I chose to do it this way because when I custom ordered fabric, the colors were very dull, it was expensive, and it really sucked when I didn't have quite enough cloth, because I would've had to order a whole other yard of the stuff. So I decided to do this instead, which is not as cost effective as I would like, but at least the colors are very bright. The downside is that the shirt is a little plastic-y and I'm afraid of ever machine washing it. But I had a lot more control over the design layout, and it was much easier to work with the hand drawn elements (which are not easily made into tiles for companies that do custom fabrics, but if you're interested in that, here's a version you can use: http://mini123.deviantart.com/#/d4ljw3u)
So this is a way to rerecreate the shirt from Syfy's Alice that Hatter wears using iron on transfers and cotton broadcloth. Sorry it's a little wordy, I just wanted to make sure I covered everything for people of different experience levels. If you wanna skip around quickly, just search for "STEP (insert next number written in all caps)" or "TROUBLESHOOTING" if you're having a problem.
To start, you will need:
- Iron-on transfer paper, which I purchased from Joann's Fabrics (it's roughly $1 per sheet, in packs of 10 or 3, I'd estimate my total at about 20-30 sheets)
- Dark wine or burgundy cotton broadcloth, also from Joann's, (about $4 a yard, you'll need 2.5-3 yards)
- A button-up shirt pattern, I used Simplicity's 7030, also purchased from Joanns (about $12, I think)
- Thread of roughly the same color as the fabric or a little darker, for when you sew the shirt. I used Dual Duty color 2900 (about $2 per spool)
- Scissors and an iron hot enough to iron cotton. Oh, and a surface on which you can iron. I used a table with a towel on it (as you can see below). I would recommend the largest surface you can get, so you can lay out an entire piece of the shirt on it.
- The images I uploaded of the pattern (you can find them here)
- Patience.
Make sure that your transfers are for dark fabrics
STEP ONE: Cut out your fabric into the parts of the shirt.
Take out the shirt pattern bits, find the right size, lay them out on the cotton fabric (make sure to check that they're going along the grain the right way), pin them and cut them out. Basically just follow the directions in the Simplicity pattern.
STEP TWO: Figure out which side you'll be putting transfers on.
Once you have the pieces, lay them out together and figure out which side will be facing out. Make sure you don't iron on stuff to the wrong side and end up with two left front shirt pieces or something. You can mark the side you're going to be ironing on with a pencil or something, if you're worried you'll mess it up. You're only going to be ironing on designs to the sleeves, the two front pieces, the back piece, one of the collar pieces (the pattern calls for two), and one of the cuff pieces on each sleeve (the pattern calls for four).
STEP THREE: Print out your transfer sheets.
The packets of transfer paper will have sheets of thick white paper-like stuff with thin blue stripes on one side, and a sheet of parchment paper.
You want to load the paper stripe side up into your printer (any ink-jet printer will do). The color of printers varies, so use regular paper to test whether the images I provided will have the colors you want. I had to tone mine down a little, because my printer is very bright. Here's an example of how much the color can vary depending on your printer:
This is also showing what a printed out sheet will look like. You shouldn't have to do any resizing of the images, although you might need to adjust the settings so that the printer doesn't cut off the edges of the design, which are very close to the border of the paper. Try "borderless" printing or something.
STEP FOUR: Cut out the elements
So the best way to do this is probably to cut out each thing with a border of white around the edges, peel off the backing, and then cut the white edges off. I just cut closely to the larger things and peeled the backing off without any white border, and for the tiny orange flowers I would peel off the back of the whole sheet first and then cut them out.
This is where patience is needed. Peeling the backs off of these things is not easy or fun. I developed a lot of little tricks to help out, but there's really no good way to do it.
Be careful that you peel off the right layer, because the back can sometimes split into two layers itself. If this happens, start trying to peel from a different spot of the transfer.
My trick is to have blunt nails, and to kind of tease the image side of the paper to peel back. (it's difficult to show, even in person)
Once you get a small corner like this up, carefully slide your nail under and back and forth along the edge, to get more of it peeled away, and then bend the backing so that it's detached completely from the transfer
Then carefully peel the rest of the transfer off
You'll end up with a floppy piece of transfer paper with the design on it :)
STEP FIVE: Lay out the design elements on the fabric
Use this as a reference, and lay out a bit of the design onto your fabric. You can only iron on as much as can fit under the piece of parchment paper, so don't go too crazy. The basic unit of the pattern is something like this:
One big heart in the middle, four little orange flowers in the spaces around the big heart, an orange daisy on either side, and underneath it a white daisy. The pinwheel things will fill in the space between four hearts, so I would actually put those on last. I usually did a row of a few hearts with mini oranges and daisies between them, then do the row that's a mirror image of those with the mini oranges and mini cream flower between them, then fill in the pinwheels.
Sometimes you'll have to cut the hearts or daisies in half or other fractions in order to make the design go to the edge, which is fine, just try to be conservative and use the other bit for a different place along the edge.
I also did not continue the design below where the shirt would be tucked into pants, in order to minimize the amount of transfer paper I would be using. Also the numbers I gave on deviant art are estimates for a small shirt size. I counted 95 hearts total on my shirt, which means 95 white and orange daisies, 94 pinwheels, 380 tiny orange flowers, and 48 tiny cream flowers. If you're sewing a shirt for a bigger guy, you're going to need more fabric and thus more transfers.
OH and make sure you get the hearts on the corners of the collar, because that's like, the iconic thing that people can see of Hatter's shirt!
STEP FIVE: Iron!
Once you've laid out the peeled off transfer elements onto the fabric design-side up, place the parchment paper over them like so
I had my iron pretty hot, on the "cotton" setting.
Iron just for a few seconds, no more than ten. Make sure you are always moving the iron so it doesn't burn the design.
Iron on as much of the design as you can one time, try not to miss any of the bits, especially around the hearts. I unfortunately didn't realize what was happening before it was too late. I would put each of the elements on in a stepwise fashion; first hearts and daisies, then the little orange and cream flowers, then the pinwheels. I ended up burning many of the large hearts a little bit, resulting in them turning slightly pinkish:
After I realized what was happening, I had to actually intentionally over-iron the rest of the designs on the cuffs and arms, because so much of the fabric was already like that, and I wanted consistency even if it was imperfection I was copying.
Do not make my mistakes.
STEP SEVEN: Sew the shirt!
Follow the directions in the pattern and sew yourself a shirt! The shirt should not have front pockets, just fyi. I believe the buttons on his shirt are actually maroon/burgundy in color (i.e. matching the color of the fabric), although I'll be using cream-colored buttons. Remember to sew them onto the correct side for men (the buttons go on the left if you're facing it)
Final product:
TROUBLESHOOTING:
1. I can't peel the backing off the !@#$ing transfer sheets!
This is probably one of the trickiest parts of the process. I showed above the way that worked best for me, but if you're still having trouble, other tricks include:
a) Using the blade of scissors to slice along the backing so that it splits in two, without cutting through the transfer itself. Then you can just bend it at the slice, and easily peel the backing off from there. However, it's very difficult to get the slice right, and you need a sharp pair of scissors
b) Sticking the backing to duck tape, and using fingernails to peel off the transfer while the backing is held by the tape. This has about a 25% success rate in my experience.
c) Peel off the entire sheet before you start cutting. It's sometimes easier to peel off when there are corners you can use. Just be gentle when peeling.
Patience and persistence are the key to success here.
2. I printed the design on the wrong side of the transfer paper.
Don't worry about it, just load it in with the now printed on bits facing up, and print it out again. The print on the backing will not affect the transfer side.
3. I messed up the design on part of the shirt!
Since it's such a crazy design, likely no one will notice. But if it's really obvious, you might wanna try using a little fabric paint to cover up the flawed part, and continue ironing on the correct design over it. Unfortunately this never happened to me, so I don't have a great answer. Just be very careful when laying out the design.
3. When I print out the design on the transfer paper, the colors seem dull, and I can't get them to look brighter.
The transfer paper will become more saturated once it's ironed onto the fabric, so don't worry too much about seemingly dull looking colors. I did some testers with the transfer paper and printer I had before starting the design to make sure the colors would look right once they were ironed on. Test on a scrap of fabric before starting the design on the real shirt.
I chose to do it this way because when I custom ordered fabric, the colors were very dull, it was expensive, and it really sucked when I didn't have quite enough cloth, because I would've had to order a whole other yard of the stuff. So I decided to do this instead, which is not as cost effective as I would like, but at least the colors are very bright. The downside is that the shirt is a little plastic-y and I'm afraid of ever machine washing it. But I had a lot more control over the design layout, and it was much easier to work with the hand drawn elements (which are not easily made into tiles for companies that do custom fabrics, but if you're interested in that, here's a version you can use: http://mini123.deviantart.com/#/d4ljw3u)
So this is a way to rerecreate the shirt from Syfy's Alice that Hatter wears using iron on transfers and cotton broadcloth. Sorry it's a little wordy, I just wanted to make sure I covered everything for people of different experience levels. If you wanna skip around quickly, just search for "STEP (insert next number written in all caps)" or "TROUBLESHOOTING" if you're having a problem.
To start, you will need:
- Iron-on transfer paper, which I purchased from Joann's Fabrics (it's roughly $1 per sheet, in packs of 10 or 3, I'd estimate my total at about 20-30 sheets)
- Dark wine or burgundy cotton broadcloth, also from Joann's, (about $4 a yard, you'll need 2.5-3 yards)
- A button-up shirt pattern, I used Simplicity's 7030, also purchased from Joanns (about $12, I think)
- Thread of roughly the same color as the fabric or a little darker, for when you sew the shirt. I used Dual Duty color 2900 (about $2 per spool)
- Scissors and an iron hot enough to iron cotton. Oh, and a surface on which you can iron. I used a table with a towel on it (as you can see below). I would recommend the largest surface you can get, so you can lay out an entire piece of the shirt on it.
- The images I uploaded of the pattern (you can find them here)
- Patience.
Make sure that your transfers are for dark fabrics
STEP ONE: Cut out your fabric into the parts of the shirt.
Take out the shirt pattern bits, find the right size, lay them out on the cotton fabric (make sure to check that they're going along the grain the right way), pin them and cut them out. Basically just follow the directions in the Simplicity pattern.
STEP TWO: Figure out which side you'll be putting transfers on.
Once you have the pieces, lay them out together and figure out which side will be facing out. Make sure you don't iron on stuff to the wrong side and end up with two left front shirt pieces or something. You can mark the side you're going to be ironing on with a pencil or something, if you're worried you'll mess it up. You're only going to be ironing on designs to the sleeves, the two front pieces, the back piece, one of the collar pieces (the pattern calls for two), and one of the cuff pieces on each sleeve (the pattern calls for four).
STEP THREE: Print out your transfer sheets.
The packets of transfer paper will have sheets of thick white paper-like stuff with thin blue stripes on one side, and a sheet of parchment paper.
You want to load the paper stripe side up into your printer (any ink-jet printer will do). The color of printers varies, so use regular paper to test whether the images I provided will have the colors you want. I had to tone mine down a little, because my printer is very bright. Here's an example of how much the color can vary depending on your printer:
This is also showing what a printed out sheet will look like. You shouldn't have to do any resizing of the images, although you might need to adjust the settings so that the printer doesn't cut off the edges of the design, which are very close to the border of the paper. Try "borderless" printing or something.
STEP FOUR: Cut out the elements
So the best way to do this is probably to cut out each thing with a border of white around the edges, peel off the backing, and then cut the white edges off. I just cut closely to the larger things and peeled the backing off without any white border, and for the tiny orange flowers I would peel off the back of the whole sheet first and then cut them out.
This is where patience is needed. Peeling the backs off of these things is not easy or fun. I developed a lot of little tricks to help out, but there's really no good way to do it.
Be careful that you peel off the right layer, because the back can sometimes split into two layers itself. If this happens, start trying to peel from a different spot of the transfer.
My trick is to have blunt nails, and to kind of tease the image side of the paper to peel back. (it's difficult to show, even in person)
Once you get a small corner like this up, carefully slide your nail under and back and forth along the edge, to get more of it peeled away, and then bend the backing so that it's detached completely from the transfer
Then carefully peel the rest of the transfer off
You'll end up with a floppy piece of transfer paper with the design on it :)
STEP FIVE: Lay out the design elements on the fabric
Use this as a reference, and lay out a bit of the design onto your fabric. You can only iron on as much as can fit under the piece of parchment paper, so don't go too crazy. The basic unit of the pattern is something like this:
One big heart in the middle, four little orange flowers in the spaces around the big heart, an orange daisy on either side, and underneath it a white daisy. The pinwheel things will fill in the space between four hearts, so I would actually put those on last. I usually did a row of a few hearts with mini oranges and daisies between them, then do the row that's a mirror image of those with the mini oranges and mini cream flower between them, then fill in the pinwheels.
Sometimes you'll have to cut the hearts or daisies in half or other fractions in order to make the design go to the edge, which is fine, just try to be conservative and use the other bit for a different place along the edge.
I also did not continue the design below where the shirt would be tucked into pants, in order to minimize the amount of transfer paper I would be using. Also the numbers I gave on deviant art are estimates for a small shirt size. I counted 95 hearts total on my shirt, which means 95 white and orange daisies, 94 pinwheels, 380 tiny orange flowers, and 48 tiny cream flowers. If you're sewing a shirt for a bigger guy, you're going to need more fabric and thus more transfers.
OH and make sure you get the hearts on the corners of the collar, because that's like, the iconic thing that people can see of Hatter's shirt!
STEP FIVE: Iron!
Once you've laid out the peeled off transfer elements onto the fabric design-side up, place the parchment paper over them like so
I had my iron pretty hot, on the "cotton" setting.
Iron just for a few seconds, no more than ten. Make sure you are always moving the iron so it doesn't burn the design.
Iron on as much of the design as you can one time, try not to miss any of the bits, especially around the hearts. I unfortunately didn't realize what was happening before it was too late. I would put each of the elements on in a stepwise fashion; first hearts and daisies, then the little orange and cream flowers, then the pinwheels. I ended up burning many of the large hearts a little bit, resulting in them turning slightly pinkish:
After I realized what was happening, I had to actually intentionally over-iron the rest of the designs on the cuffs and arms, because so much of the fabric was already like that, and I wanted consistency even if it was imperfection I was copying.
Do not make my mistakes.
STEP SEVEN: Sew the shirt!
Follow the directions in the pattern and sew yourself a shirt! The shirt should not have front pockets, just fyi. I believe the buttons on his shirt are actually maroon/burgundy in color (i.e. matching the color of the fabric), although I'll be using cream-colored buttons. Remember to sew them onto the correct side for men (the buttons go on the left if you're facing it)
Final product:
TROUBLESHOOTING:
1. I can't peel the backing off the !@#$ing transfer sheets!
This is probably one of the trickiest parts of the process. I showed above the way that worked best for me, but if you're still having trouble, other tricks include:
a) Using the blade of scissors to slice along the backing so that it splits in two, without cutting through the transfer itself. Then you can just bend it at the slice, and easily peel the backing off from there. However, it's very difficult to get the slice right, and you need a sharp pair of scissors
b) Sticking the backing to duck tape, and using fingernails to peel off the transfer while the backing is held by the tape. This has about a 25% success rate in my experience.
c) Peel off the entire sheet before you start cutting. It's sometimes easier to peel off when there are corners you can use. Just be gentle when peeling.
Patience and persistence are the key to success here.
2. I printed the design on the wrong side of the transfer paper.
Don't worry about it, just load it in with the now printed on bits facing up, and print it out again. The print on the backing will not affect the transfer side.
3. I messed up the design on part of the shirt!
Since it's such a crazy design, likely no one will notice. But if it's really obvious, you might wanna try using a little fabric paint to cover up the flawed part, and continue ironing on the correct design over it. Unfortunately this never happened to me, so I don't have a great answer. Just be very careful when laying out the design.
3. When I print out the design on the transfer paper, the colors seem dull, and I can't get them to look brighter.
The transfer paper will become more saturated once it's ironed onto the fabric, so don't worry too much about seemingly dull looking colors. I did some testers with the transfer paper and printer I had before starting the design to make sure the colors would look right once they were ironed on. Test on a scrap of fabric before starting the design on the real shirt.