Brother Bear Hoodie

Some of you may remember when I posted about how to screen print a Mama Moose hoodie. My children loved that they were each represented on the sweatshirt as one of the moose calves. I refer to that blog post in this post.

My oldest son is growing like a weed. He is more than a head taller than almost every kid his age. I am constantly buying him bigger clothes, shoes, jackets, etc. This last time around, when we were looking for a replacement sweatshirt, he mentioned he liked my moose one. We both began looking around and brainstorming what we could screen print on his. He stumbled upon a brother bear hoodie and loved it; He is the oldest “bear” and has 3 little “brother bears”. So here is what we designed . . .

Step 1: Purchase Hoodie

I first bought a blue, very comfortable hoodie. We then went to work designing what he wanted his brother bear image to look like. I ended up putting bear prints on the pocket because he liked that the mama moose hoodie had something painted on the pocket. We placed this on the bottom-corner of the front pocket as a little something extra.

Note: The screen printing I did is the exact same procedure as my Disneyland Shirts.

Step 2: Template

Now create your template. You can use freezer paper or vinyl like I do. I measured the front of the shirt just as I did for my Disneyland Shirts and subtracted 7″ to get the image width of 7.75″. (From the arm seam to the other arm seam it was 14.75″. I then subtracted 7″, to get the length of 7.75″.)

Brother Bear SVG

Download Zip file for the Brother Bear SVG & PDF

For the bear prints I measured and came up with the width of 2.5″.

Bear Prints SVG

Download Zip file for the Bear Prints SVG & PDF

Now place the template on the hoodie. If using freezer paper, iron it into place. If using vinyl, stick it on using this method with tacky spray. I also have a video here that shows how I do it using another shirt I made.

Step 3: Paint/Screen Print

I then used my favorite screen printing paint and just painted it on with a paint brush. Do it thick enough that you can’t see the shirt color from behind, but don’t do it too thick that it will just crack and peel once you dry it in the dryer.

Allow to dry for about 12-24 hours.

Step 4: Heat Seal

When completely dry, peel off template. Place a thin piece of scrap fabric over the image and heat set the paint with a hot iron. (Just as I did here.)

Now it’s ready to be worn, washed, dried, just whatever and it should hold up better than a store bought screen printed shirt. Really.