T Shirt Surgery If you have ever gone to camp you have probably seen squads who bought Velcro fasteners to tie up their sleeves. These look like a good idea, but they aren't. The fasteners work by pulling the neckline towards the sleeve and the sleeve towards the neck. This makes the t-shirt tight through the neck and the sleeve bunch up under the arm. We think our version of this works much better. If you put an eyelet just above the shoulder seam, only the sleeve pulls up. This keeps the neckline loose and the underarm from bunching too much. At Wal-Mart we found this roll of ribbon that matched our design. We put an eyelet in each shoulder and then cut two 14 inch ribbons to tie the sleeves up with. This was very easy an we loved how it turned out. The eyelets were easy to install. First you need to mark your T shirt. Do not put the eyelet in the sleeve. Instead, put it in the shoulder close to the shoulder seam. It is up to you to decide where to place the eyelet. If it goes to the front of the seam (like in the picture) the ribbon will be more noticeable. It works just as well if it is to the back of the seam. The most important thing you must do when adding eyelets is to attach a piece of interfacing to it. If you do not add this backing the eyelets will pull loose. We use the heaviest, least stretchy interfacing we can find. We used a small piece of it with all eyelets that we attatched to all the t-shirts. The interfacing should go on the underneath of the fabric (between the t-shirt and the eyelet gun.) It looks like this when it is attached. You can trim it down after it is installed. When you turn the t-shirt over you do not see the interfacing. This adds a lot of strength to the shirt. You will especially need this when you are threading heavier ribbon through more than one eyelet. It was very easy to find black and white ribbon that looked great with this shirt. The bigger roll is from "JoAnn Fabrics" and the smaller one is from Wal-Mart. For around $2.00 or $3.00 you get eight to ten feet of ribbon on each roll. This is enough for several t-shirts and a couple of matching hair ribbons. If you really want to match everything several places carry matching shoelaces. We wanted to match the ribbon to our custom cheer dollz t-shirts. We custom design these for a lot of schools who have used them for their cheer clinics. We can do this shirts in your school colors with your mascot and school name for your next cheer clinic. E-mail us to hear more about this. Several of the cheer coaches have asked for ways they can make the staff shirts stand out and not look like the one they provide for the little girls at their clinics. This is one of the examples I show them. This thin ribbon is really cheap. You can find these at any craft or fabric store and they usually cost $1.00 for 2 or 3 rolls. I used a few shiny iron-ons that were the exact size of the pom pom strands. They iron right into the fabric so there are no sharp edges sticking out. If you decide to do this make sure you cover the t-shirt design with a piece of iron-on paper when you iron it. When we found ribbon that was feminine and light we were very excited that it matched this design. This beautiful Organdy ribbon is from "JoAnn Fabrics" and looks great with the shirt. Another great way to lace up your sleeves is to use decorative shoe laces. These laces are very heavy and can only be used with eyelets that are reinforced with interfacing. Most laces are 45 inches long and will need to be cut in half if you only use one eyelet. I used this 45 inch lace with several eyelets for this t shirt. The star shoelaces go beautifully with our star design t shirt from the store. All of the shoelaces in this section came from "Wal-Mart" and were very low priced. The striped ones come in a bunch of different colors and you can buy them to match with almost any shirt. These "Sponge Bob" and "Strawberry Shortcake" laces are really cute. They would look great if you were doing t-shirt surgery on a little girl's top. I added multiple eyelets to each sleeve and laced them up with a small satin ribbon. (This shirt we designed for a local cheer competition. If you are hosting a cheer competition, contact us for custom designs and group rates.) We will have a detailed description on how to do this yourself coming soon. We have these designs on un-altered T shirts in our Cheer Store!