Back To Basics - How To Make A DIY Length Check T-Shirt
Tracking your progress while you grow your hair is pretty obvious to most of us but you would be surprised at how often people think that just glancing in the mirror to see their current length is enough and they will remember where they were for the next time.
If you are like the millions of other active hair growers who have busy lives and can’t remember what they had for breakfast 6 days ago then trust me when I say that you are not likely to remember exactly where your hair falls every single month without a bit of help.
If you have natural hair it is even more important to have a sensible way of tracking your hair length because with the major shrinkage that afro textured hair is known for, it can at times seem like your hair isn’t growing at all. This may make you lose faith in your hair regimen which may actually be working wonderfully.
A simple length check t-shirt, coupled with a camera of course, is the ideal solution because it helps you see even small changes in your hair length. There’s nothing more gratifying than seeing the length of your hair creep past the milestones on your t-shirt as the months go by!
You can of course just buy a length check t-shirt but I understand that some of us may not be in a position to buy one particularly if you live in a country where you are unable to buy one locally and shipping from abroad is prohibitively expensive.
More than anything however I would like to show as many people as possible that growing hair is not complicated or expensive and as such hacking your own solution to a length check t-shirt is just as good an option as buying one.
These are the items that you will need to make a DIY length check t-shirt: a plain t-shirt, a ruler, a tape measure and a permanent marker pen. And here are the steps to make it:
- Place the shirt on a table and turn it over with the back facing up.
- Using your ruler and the marker, mark dots in the middle of the shirt every inch from the neckline down to just past the waist area.
- Mark similar dots on the left and the right of the t-shirt to aid in drawing straight lines across. Ensure that you leave enough room on the left and right of the shirt for numbering.
- Using the dots that you made as a guide, draw straight lines across the t-shirt
- Write numbers on both ends of the lines
And there you have it! You have just made your own length check t-shirt.
A word of warning, even though they may be numbered, length check t-shirts don’t necessarily measure the actual length of your hair in inches. This is because we are all so different in neck & torso sizes it would be impossible to accurately create a shirt that works for everyone.
If you can’t be bothered to make one yourself you can pick up one of our plain length check t-shirt or our popular “YES, WOW, DIVA” length check t-shirts.
A length check t-shirt should be considered to be a tool to help you see the gradual progress in the length of your hair over time. To check your absolute length in inches, a good ole tape measure is still the way to go!
A word of warning, even though they may be numbered, length check t-shirts don’t necessarily measure the actual length of your hair in inches. This is because we are all so different in neck & torso sizes it would be impossible to accurately create a shirt that works for everyone.
A length check t-shirt should be considered to be a tool to help you see the gradual progression of your length over time. To check your absolute length check in inches, the good old tape measure is still the way to go!
See the other articles in the back to basics series here >>
