Masterchef T-Shirt – Freezer Paper Stencilling

My apologies for the lack of blog posts lately (and particularly the lack of cooking posts). I’ve been struck down by stomach bugs and colds, and am coughing my way through the worst cold I’ve had in years. I think I need to look after myself a bit better, although a teething toddler struggling to sleep at night isn’t helping (poor little man, those molars are mean!). Because of all this, I’ve been cooking really simple meals which aren’t worth blogging about (meat and 3 veg anyone?), and my nesting projects have been put on the backburner. Hopefully I’ll get to the living/dining projects soon.

I haven’t lived completely without craft though (it’s just not possible!). I bought a couple of plain, long-sleeve T-shirts for my son a couple of months ago for $3.50 each, and I thought I’d better embellish them and get them into the clothing rotation quicksmart, before he grows out of them.

It’s a difficult job deciding how to personalise boys’ clothing, but I settled on the Masterchef logo. It’s just about the only TV show I watch (aside from In the Night Garden, hmmm), and quite often, when my son won’t settle in the evening, he may join me on the couch. It’s also not an obvious TV show logo to non-Masterchef fanatics.

I went with freezer paper stencilling as a quick and easy project. However, as freezer paper isn’t readily available here in Australia, I did a bit of googling, and came up with using the outside wrapping on a ream of printer paper as an alternative (environmental bonus: re-using a non-recyclable product!). I printed the image onto the inside (non-shiny) side of the paper, cut out the image with an X-acto-style knife, and ironed it shiny-side (outside of the wrapper) side down onto the T-shirts. I won’t go into the full details of the stencilling – there are plenty of tutorials already out there, or just follow the directions on your fabric paint! Here is the end result:

They aren’t perfect as I wasn’t sure how long to hold the iron on, and it was also quite an intricate design (so I couldn’t re-use the same paper as I ripped it when pulling it off!). Overall, I’m happy with them as unique clothes for my son, and all the Masterchef fans at the supermarket and in the park have commented on how cute they are.

Have you given freezer-paper stencilling a go? What designs have you used for boys’ clothes? Let me know in the comments.