How to Make a Chewbacca T Shirt

Every now and then something comes along that is just so DANG COOL, it makes you want to squeal! Tara of the Sewing Rabbit Team is here with the most awesome sewing tutorial ever. How to embellish a T Shirt with a Chewbacca Strap, a la Star Wars.  Come on now, who wouldn’t love that?!  The perfect Star Wars T Shirt DIY, for any kid or adult. You know you want to make one.

How to Make a Chewbacca T Shirt – DIY

Hello, Tara here from Girl Like The Sea with a nerdy project for you. Today we’re going to let the Wookiee win, with a mod for a simple tee shirt pattern to include an awesome Chewbacca ammo strap.

You can add this detail while sewing a tee shirt for your little one or even you!

I’ve gone unconventional and made it girl friendly with colors and sequins, because WHY SHOULD BOYS HAVE ALL THE STAR WARS FUN? Right?

But you could go more conventional with browns and blacks and make this a boy friendly project too. Either way, your little fuzzball will be laughing it up in their sweet Chewie tee

Chewbacca Strap Tutorial

Supplies:

• T shirt front fabric
• Strap base fabric (shown in blue faux leather)
• Trim or fabric to make rectangles on strap
• Thin strip for overlay piece in fabric that matches strap base

First steps:

After cutting out your fabric pieces for the tee shirt, cut out a full sized shirt front piece on the fold of a piece of paper, just like you did with fabric. This will be the template for your strap piece.

Next, draw the shape of the strap on the new pattern piece, keeping the width of the strap at the shoulder out of the seam allowance area. See in the photo below how I’ve marked the seam allowance 3/8″ in from the outer edges of the pattern piece? My tee shirt pattern has this size seam allowance, and I’ve drawn my strap inside of that area so it doesn’t get caught in my neckband or arm piece seams, adding unnecessary bulk.

Now cut your strap pattern piece out!

Now trace a second strap piece and draw your pattern for the skinny overlay piece that will go on top of everything at the end. I used a 1/4″ width for mine. Don’t cut it out though because it’s easier to stick the whole pattern piece onto a section of your fabric and then cut it out

So now you have a pattern piece for the strap, and the skinny overlay

Cut it all out!

There’s your skinny, slippery little overlay piece

Depending on what you use as the rectangular pieces, you can assemble a couple different ways. For the sequin version I just laid the trim over the strap pattern piece and cut a bunch of sections. Then I arranged them on the strap, varying between using one piece or two to make it double thick.

You can also use shiny fabric, or whatever it is you want and cut 1/2″ and 1″ rectangles. I cut a whole piece of this shiny stuff with my strap pattern piece and then just cut section out of that with 1″ gaps between them.

Sew your pieces on, either before or after attaching the strap to the shirt. I did both. Either way is fine.

Lay your skinny piece on top and stitch it on.

Then you stitch it onto the shirt front flush with the edge of the shoulder seam and the side seam, sew the shirt up from there like you normally would (strap top and bottom raw edges will be sewn into the seam allowances), and then admire your kid in their custom nerd gear sewn by YOU!

Of course they’ll want to roar at one another after donning their shirts

But they’ll make up. Chewie is kind of a softiee afterall

 

Girl wookiees tend to have some attitude

And a little Ewok may sneak into the village to munch on Chewie for a spell

But he’s so cute that we’ll let it go

I’m trying hard to come up with more narrative to justify showing more cute pictures of my kids, but I’m coming up short…..

So I’ll just start saying goodbye now like one of those people who’s really awkward at goodbyes and lingers for too long……

Thank you for reading!

In case you were wondering, I used the Flashback Tee from Rae for my shirts (with modifications). Fabric came from Fabric.com.

Until next time…

Happy Sewing!