Toddler Thanksgiving Outfit, Part 1

Shirt

Grade: A

Difficulty: Beginner

Pattern: Described below

To start with, this is a two-part project, the shirt here, and a skirt. The skirt will be in it's own upcoming post, so you don't have so much to read/ wade through at once. I'll put a picture of the two together on the second part.

So I've seen shirts for sale with this saying on it, and decided it would be really really simple to make my own! The saying is simple to do, and you can pretty much do anything you want. Here's how I did it, and the supplies you need.

 Supplies
 -1 shirt, desired size. Mine started white. I used some orange Pekoe tea to dye it a cream color.
- Fabric scraps to make applique
- Heat n Bond Lite (Make sure to get the lite if you plan on stitching the fabric down. If you don't want to stitch, you can use the Heavy Heat n Bond, but in my experience it will peel off after several washes)
- Diagram of your saying, if you want to use the same fonts I did, here's the document: Gobble doc
-Matching thread
-Sewing machine

Since I dyed the shirt, I had to thoroughly rinse and dry my shirt. If you do something similar, you want to use as little laundry product as possible  (No soaps or softeners). This will help the glue in the Heat n Bond stick as much as possible to the fabric.

In the process of tracing. I like to have a stack of pens next to me, so I don't have to move anything if (and when) the pen stops working on my cold windows. Also, if you want to thicken any of the letters, this is the perfect time to do it!

All traced, backwards!

 After prepping my shirt, I traced my words onto the Heat N Bond. Remember that you want to put the Heat N Bond on the back of you fabric scraps, then on the front of your shirt, so you need to trace the letter BACKWARDS onto the paper side of the Heat N Bond. The easiest way to do that, is to put your paper right side away from you on a window, then put the Heat N Bond sheet paper side facing you on top. Then trace.

After tracing onto the Heat N Bond, cut approximately around the letters.

Follow package direction to apply the Heat N Bond to the back of your fabric scraps.

You will notice that I left the dots for the 'i' and the exclamation point attached. I cut them out last thing before I ironed the pieces onto the shirt.  Also, if you are using my template for the words, I highly recommend starting your cutting with the holes in the centers of the letters. I cut mine entirely with a pair of scissors. I suggest borrowing or buying and Exacto knife.

Cut carefully on your traced lines on the paper side of the Heat N Bond.

Place fabric as desired on front of shirt.

Follow packages directions to apply fabric to shirt.

Stitch fabric as desired with matching/coordinating thread of your choice.  The nice part about this, is that your letters are essentially glued down, so they don't move while you stitch, and you don't need 1000 pins! Beware that the Heat N Bond may eventually come undone from the shirt or the fabric. If you want the letters to stay exactly as they are now, you will need to stitch as closely as possible to both edges while still staying on the fabric. I thought about trying to use my darning foot on this as if I was doing free motion quilting, but the knit shirt was just too stretchy for that to work! So I used my regular foot and did lots and lots and lots of pivoting.

Voila! A custom shirt, for whatever your little heart desires! All you really need for this is a good font to use that fits the project, and those are easy to find for free! There may even already be some goodies living in your computer! After that, it's just picking the colors you want, and knowing the easy steps to do it! This is also very, very simple to do with shapes!

A close-up of the finished stitching.