The Mummy Shirt Tutorial

The mummy shirt is a great sewing project for the inexperienced. To get started you will need some basic supplies:

1. a t-shirt or onesie in your child's size (I used black)
2. 1/2 - 3/4 of a yard of ivory or white knit fabric (like t-shirt fabric)
3. Wonder-Under (an iron-on material found in the fusing section of the fabric store)
4. Thread (I used black, orange, purple, and lime green----but you could use just black)
5. 2 sew-on googley eyes (they are available at the craft or fabric store)
6. embroidery floss (I used lime green)
7. a mummy pattern

This is my mummy pattern that I drew and cut out of paper.

The arm that goes across the body is a separate piece to make it look more real. I marked on my paper pattern where the arm goes.

Feel free to copy and paste my mummy pattern. Because of the size, I had to make it on two separate sheets. Make sure to tape the mummy back together at the waist so that the body is one piece. Then you can enlarge or shrink it to make it the appropriate size for your shirt.

Once you have your mummy pattern you are ready to get started. The first step is to wash and dry your t-shirt and your fabric. This is very important because there is a large shrinkage factor with knit fabrics and this will ensure that your final shirt doesn't pucker when it's laundered later. The second step is to iron the Wonder-Under adhesive side down to the entire back of your white knit fabric. Wonder-Under comes with adhesive on one side and paper on the other. You will get a set of directions on how to use Wonder-Under when you make your purchase.

Next, you will flip your white fabric over and trace your mummy onto the paper side of the Wonder-Under. Remember that you are drawing on the back side so you need to draw your mummy in the opposite direction that you actually want it to face on the shirt.

Both mummy pieces are traced in pencil onto the paper side of the Wonder-Under and ready to be cut out.

After I cut the pieces out of fabric I laid the pieces out on the shirt to make sure they were the right size before moving on to the next step.

Next, I took my remaining fabric and cut it into 3/4" strips using a rotar cutter (if you are making a smaller shirt than mine you may need to cut your strips 1/2" wide due to a change in proportion). If you don't have a rotar cutter you can also use a ruler and draw pencil lines on the paper side of the Wonder-Under and cut along the lines with scissors. Then I cut the 3/4" strips into shorter pieces that would fit on the mummy. The idea is to make the mummy look like he is wrapped. So you will want to peel the Wonder-Under paper off the back side of the fabric and begin layering your fabric strips on top of your fabric mummy as shown.

After you get your strips peeled (by taking the Wonder-Under paper off of the back) and layered you will iron over them. When you peel the paper off of the back side of the Wonder-Under it reveals adhesive allowing you to iron your pieces in place before sewing.

After ironing a few strips onto your fabric mummy you can turn it over so you can see the original outline and trim along the original outline and you will see the mummy taking shape. After you have ironed on all of the pieces, in a manner that makes the mummy looked wrapped, and trimmed your mummy along the original outline, it will look like this. The arm is simply stacked so I can see how it looks, it is not attached yet.

The next step is to sew along the cut edge or each strip. I alternated using all four colors of thread: purple, orange, black, and lime green. I wanted it to have all of the halloween colors, but you could sew everything in black if you wanted.

This is the arm with each strip sewed. Since you stacked the strips you end up only having to sew on one side of each strip. And since it's all ironed in place you can sew all of the orange at one time, then all of the purple at one time, all of the lime green at one time, and all of the black at one time. It will make it go faster the fewer times you have to thread the machine. I didn't use a steady pattern, I just skipped around ensuring that I used each color occasionally.

Next, I peeled all of the paper off of the back side of the mummy. I laid the mummy down on the t-shirt and placed it where I wanted it and then ironed it down. Since the mummy is thick I had to iron on the front side of the mummy and then turn the shirt inside out and iron from the inside of the shirt over the mummy as well. This made it stick better so I could sew it on easier. Once I had the mummy ironed on I simly sewed around the outside edge of the mummy to secure it to the t-shirt, only sewing on the front side of the shirt. Make sure to backstitch at the beginning and ending points to make sure your sewing doesn't come undone.

Then I laid the arm in place and ironed it down.

Once it was ironed down, I sewed around the edge to secure it to the shirt.

The mummy is now sewn on the shirt. Next I need to sew on the googley eyes.

After I sewed on the googley eyes I stitched a circle around the outside of each eye with lime green embroidery floss to bring more emphasis to the eyes.

And remember, mummies are fun for little girls too. To make it girlier you can add a hairbow or even sew on a little tutu around the mummy's waist.
Good luck and happy sewing! I hope this shirt brings lots of Halloween fun to your kids!

Happy Halloween,

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Sew Cute Tuesday