Introduction: Cerebral Shirt

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The Cerebral Shirt is a solution to the trials of dressing someone with cerebral palsy, or even having someone with cerebral palsy dress themselves. This shirt uses magnets placed on opposite sides of the openings of the shirt for ease of opening and closing the shirt. This Instructable is designed to guide anyone to making this same shirt easily. NOTE: This was my first time sewing anything, so some of my work is... sub-par at best.

Step 1: Step 1: Gather Your Shirts and Supplies

The first and most important step of this project is finding the base for your project. Find just about any button-up shirt that you like, though I used shirts made of an incredibly thin material and that seemed to work quite well. I would suggest purchasing some shirts from the local thrift stores so that you do not render any of your favorite shirts unusable on accident, and that you get a few of them so that you may start over from scratch if you rip through one shirt like I did.

Other necessary supplies include:

  • Thread and needle of varying colors and sizes
  • Seam ripper
  • Magnets

Step 2: Step 2: Remove the Buttons and Button Holes

The purpose of this shirt is to not have buttons used, so the first step after gathering all of your necessary supplies is to remove the buttons and close up the button holes. Use the seam ripper to cut the strings that hold the buttons onto one side of the shirt. Take a needle and some thread of your color choice and sew each of the button holes shut.

Step 3: Step 3: Installing the Magnets

This project would not be possible without simple magnets. The size of these magnets may vary, and you may choose which sized magnets you want, primarily depending on the size of the in-seam of the button portions of the shirts. The magnets I used were 18mm in diameter and 4mm thick (right around the size of a dime), and that worked quite well for the shirt that I chose for this project. After tearing the seams with the seam ripper on the insides of the shirt, I placed the magnets between the sewn-up button holes (3 on each side) and on the sides where the buttons were cut from. In order to hold them in place, I had to sew a small ring around each of the magnets.