Kyoto t-shirt

I quite often see people wearing t-shirts with the name of some Japanese city on, but I had never managed to find one for myself with the name of my favourite city, Kyoto.

I found a t-shirt in the airing cupboard, that I'd bought to decorate a few years ago, and decided to finally get started. I created an outline of the lettering then printed it out. This was the most time-consuming part of the project - because my printer developed a paper jam! I finally pulled the printer out of its corner, and turned it so I could see inside, and saw a mini bulldog clip jammed in there! It took ages with a piece of bent wire and a pair of tweezers to finally free it, and my printer is working fine now!

After printing the lettering, I taped it to a transparency sheet and used a scalpel to cut out the letters, making sure to leave pieces connecting the centre of the letter "O"s.

I taped the stencil to the t-shirt and placed a piece of card inside to protect the back of the t-shirt.

I only had navy fabric paint, and I wanted the lettering black, so I used a fabric pen. This was quite time-consuming, and I had to be careful not to pull the fabric too much, but it was less messy than using paint. I also think it gave a bit of a grungy, aged effect to the the lettering. I could have gone over the gaps in the "O"s, but I liked the stencil effect.

A quick iron and the t-shirt was ready to wear (with my bargain £7.99 skirt from the M&S sale!).