I created my own version of the "Bleeding Heart" shirt that was popularized on TikTok. I have done a lot of costume stuff with sewing but not as intensive as sewing each and every single bead on this project. I am all about being fashion forward and like to wear outfits I think I would wear if I was a playable video game character and with spooky season around the corner I think this was the perfect project to make.

I started with a basic concept sketch and thrifted two white button up shirts that I wouldn't feel bad about destroying incase I needed a back up shirt. 

I first laser cut a few different sized hearts out of foam core and chose the one I thought fit the best and traced it with pencil on the shirt. From there I originally started by hand sewing each bead one by one and realized how long that was taking. Instead I started using a really long thread and sewing each bead into the shirt with the long thread so I wouldn't have to rethread for every single bead. I started by sewing the beads around the heart boarder before adding all the "blood splatter and dripping" accents to the rest of the shirt.

I noticed some threads unraviling but thankfully a fellow student had a super cool hot glue type fabric glue that worked wonders and allowed me to secure the threads and any loose beads. 

You can really see this is where I started to have fun with the accents and even added a heart bead to dangle over my chest.