Scavenger hunt race bibs — Quarterlife Lifestyle

Earlier this month, my fellow bridesmaids and I threw a bachelorette party for our competitive, Amazing Race-loving, runner, bride-to-be friend Amie. We wanted to do something fun, but low key (no sashes or veils or lifesavers on shirts), so decided we would do a scavenger hunt around town. But what’s a race without…

Race bibs!

I actually looked into ordering bib numbers from running and cycling retailers, but as I only needed 15 or so bibs, it wasn’t a cost effective option. I also considered using DIY iron on transfers or ”screen printing” the design onto canvas using paint thinner. In the end, I decided to get the bibs printed onto fabric through Spoonflower.

This was a no sew, no paint, easy craft project! All you need is a graphic design program (I used Photoshop) that can create an image at 150 dpi. I wanted bibs that were 9 x 6 inches, so I created an image that was 1350 x 900 pixels in size. A yard of fabric is 42 x 36 inches, so I would get at least 24 bibs out of just one yard.

Since we were racing across Boston, I wanted a skyline image on the bib. I basically recreated a high res version of this skyline with a few modifications. I also found the official Amazing Race font and used that for the text.

I uploaded a jpeg of one bib to Spoonflower and set the layout option to “basic repeat” so that the image was repeated on the fabric without any empty spaces. I had a little bit of overage and that the squares on the far right were truncated. If this bothers you, you can adjust the size of your bibs so you don’t have any half bibs. I actually needed those half bibs though; you’ll see why in a sec.

The full yard of fabric with the repeated image looks like this:

One yard of quilting weight cotton was $18.00 – a 10% designer discount + $3 shipping. This brought the grand total to $19.20 for 24 race bibs.

My order arrived in about 2 weeks. Once it came, I ironed the fabric and cut the bibs into even squares. I used pinking shears to prevent fraying, but that’s totally not necessary. I’m sure there are some quilters out there who could jazz these up even more, but I just used the plain fabric as is.

Lastly, I got iron on numbers* and added numbers to the race bibs that were meaningful to the bride and groom– their wedding date, the year they met, etc. I used the scrap half bibs to test ironing on the numbers. There were also some failed attempts using a fabric marker and stencils. I think the quilting weight cotton isn’t thick enough for a stencil, but sturdier canvas might have accepted the marker better.

Then a grabbed a bunch of safety pins and we pinned these on to everyone’s clothes. We wore them throughout the “race” and while we were out at Towne later in the night. (P.S. Maple cotton candy is amazing!)

So that’s it! When I first mentioned this to someone, I got a very “what are you talking about” look, but I think these turned out pretty well. For another cute bachelorette DIY, see Kate’s post about DIY buttons. And for another creative use of Spoonflower fabric, see Young House Love’s photo backdrop.

*I had a ton of trouble finding only iron on numbers (not letters). I had no luck at AC Moore or Michaels. I ended up finding mine at Sewfisticated in Somerville/Cambridge. They were only 99 cents for 30 numbers!