DIY: Spikes!

Today I replicated a shirt I saw online. The shirt's price? £60.00 ($94)... My shirt's price? $18.
Here's what mine looks like:

I went to a thrift store to get the white shirt I used and it was only $13. The spikes I bought off of eBay for $6 and those came from China so it took awhile, BUT if you have time to wait I suggest you get most craft supplies from eBay... there are tons of cheap suppliers to purchase from and they usually have nice quality for a low price. It beats shopping in any store.

First off, I traced the collar's shape onto a piece of paper to make a template like this:

Make sure to allow room for any space that the threading takes up since you don't want to put the spikes in that area to avoid unraveling. After I cut the template out, I used hole reinforcers to make the spacing perfect. I started with drawing the circles on the template but it didn't seem uniformed and so I figured this way out. I had 24 spikes (12 for each side) so I tried to make it work as best I could.

Next, I used a hole punch to punch through the reinforcers (fig. 1) so I could trace it on the shirt (fig. 2).

fig.1

fig. 2

You want to make sure that you draw a small dot even though the hole is bigger. It's better to have a struggle forcing the spike in than to make a hole so large, it simply falls out.

Once both flaps of the collar have the dots traced onto them, take a Xacto knife or any other craft knife and start twisting it into the dot so it makes a hole. You can then stab the hole with a small screwdriver to make it a bit larger and make room for the screw to come up through.

The spike consist of two components, a screw and the actual spike. The screw screws into the bottom of the spike and then it's done. Just poke the screw through the bottom of the collar and twist the spike on top of it. That's all. Here's what the bottom of the collar will look like with the screws in: