How to age a shirt for the post-apocalypse

After whatever the heck happened, clothes go through a lot of wear and tear that isn't about to be replaced any time soon. So for this project I wanted to test some of the ways people "age" or "break in" brand new shirts. Some of this uses some basic dyeing, sometimes sandpaper, and some opportunistic cutting and sewing. Certainly not penultimate way of "aging" a shirt (that comes from time, dirt, and rough-housing), but kind of an interesting exercise in T-shirt deconstruction.

 

Materials
-Unwanted T shirt
-Black tea bags
-Scraps of cloth (for embellishment details)

Tools
-Sandpaper
-Scissors
-Needle/thread

1. Gather the materials
I used pretty much what I already had for this. A T-shirt I got from a blood drive, black tea and vinegar from my pantry, whatever thread and cloth scraps I had. And the tools are pretty basic items as well.

2. Pre-wash
New shirt or otherwise, always to pre-wash it. I just ran this shirt under a tap and wrung it dry.

3. Sandpaper it
To rough up the printing, a little sandpaper does the trick. Some tutorials warn that it can be too damaging to the shirt if you're trying to make it "vintage", but if you're roaming the radioactive wastes I doubt a little extra rough

4. Tea soak
To take the edge off that blinding bleach white of a brand new shirt, I decided to attempt a dye job using household materials. I followed the lead of FoundItemClothing.com. For his I used about 5 cups of water and had 4 tea bags steep for about 10 minutes.

I submerged the shirt in the tea, and let it sit for about 20 minutes.

Then I ran it through the dryer.

4b. Artistic staining
After it dries, you can use the remaining tea and drip it around the collar, in patches down the front and around the armpit to mimic sweat stains. I did this a little bit, but you can dry and repeat for a deeper stain.

5. Cut and reattach sleeves
This part I kind of made up as I went along. I cut off the sleeves, and extended the cut to 1.5 inch inside the sleeve line.

This is what it looks like, it's a very deep cut with exposes a lot under the armpit.

I reattached that 1.5 inch piece of sleeve between the sleeve seam and the cut line back on. Makes it a bit more patchwork and reduces that exposed pit area.

I used a quick and rough running stitch to reattach, and did it by hand. Very slipshod and not too secure, but that supposed to be intentional.

I also cut out the collar. Here's what it should look like when finished.

6. Additional aging
I got the sandpaper out and went at the neckline and hem with a will. This breaks those edges in and frays it a but. In odd spots on the shirt I also scraped it hard enough to form small holes in the fabric.

7. Finishing touches
Since this was going to be part of my post-apocalyptic scout costume, I wanted to add a little bit of personality. My embroidery skills are pretty minimal, I kind of like to doodle but don't really care too much if it's a little wonky and unprofessional. It kind of works for this genre anyway, you have few resources and can't afford to use too much thread on a non-essential. The vines themselves are green threads, and leaves are scraps of green T-shirt cut into leaf shapes and sewn on.

For the finishing touch I made a rosette from felt following the instructions found on A Million Moments blog.

And there you have it, a brand new blood donor shirt that was transformed into ragtag clothing fit for the wasteland. Good luck and keep crafting!