Cross-Stitch Embellished T Shirts

This is a project I had been meaning to do for a while. I found these cute cross-stitched bibs in a charity shop last year – clearly made for a little one and never used. I really loved the cute retro mouse, but the little birdys were lovely too. I thought they would make a nice embellishment for a holiday t shirt so I carefully cut out the designs (as they had been stitched onto cotton aida fabric it made it super easy to cut out). I used bondaweb to iron on/stick each in place onto plain colour t shirts bought from H&M then sewed round them with a complimentary colour cotton thread.

My girls love them and they got a few compliments while we are on holiday over the half term as did the t-shirts!

‘Sukie Iron Ons’ T-Shirts

My husband bought me the ‘Iron Ons’ book by graphic designers ‘Sukie’ for christmas – I believe it was from my amazon wish list, but I have seen these for sale  (new) in oxfam shops. I have been a big fan of ‘Sukie’ wrapping paper for a while and even have a sheet of their mixed font alphabet paper framed in our stairwell. So the opportunity to make some stuff with the quirky cute designs has been very tempting – but not so much that its taken me till March to make use of them!

I had planned to upcycle some old t-shirts with the iron ons, but all the girls’ tees seem to be covered in too many stains for sucessful up-cycling, so I had to buy new. I found these 3 packs of plain colour capped sleeve summer tees in tesco, so bought a pack in size 5-6 and another in 2-3, one set for each for Martha and Alice. I let them pick their own images from the book, with a bit of persuasion from me of course. Martha chose the page of pink and khaki butterflies and the ‘princess castle’ with home sweet home on it. Alice liked the animals in the tree which reminded her of her favorite book of the moment – ‘Stuck’ by Oliver Jefferies (firmly recommended by the way). I chose the two half page alphabet designs the same as I have hanging in the stairwell, the colours in these included the same pink and peppermint green as two of the t-shirts in the packs so I put those onto the dark blue ones, the pink butterflies and 3 cute birds on branches went onto the pale green tees and the tree and palace went onto the pink tees. With the planning done I got out the iron, I do most of my iron ons on the kitchen counter as its firm and flat enough to apply some pressure, I am however pretty tall so can stand on my tippy toes and apply a considerable amount of my body weight to the iron during the process, a sturdy kitchen table would work for shorter folks, but be careful not to scald the surface. You have to have the iron on its hottest setting and no steam or water.

They went on pretty easily, and I am really pleased with the results, 3 super cute t-shirts each for the up-coming summer, that look much more expensive than they actually were. The girls love having an influence in what they wear and this is a such a quick and easy way for us to customise things. And we have loads of these lovely ‘Sukie’ designs left in the book, now lets see, what can we use them on next?…

Sophie from ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea’ for World Book Day

I have no idea when ‘World Book Day’ is as every school seems to be doing something different every day all through March! But Martha’s School had a dressing up day on Friday. I was reluctant to let her dress up as a disney princess for this one, as they are from films, not books. We settled on the classic ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea’  by Judith Kerr, whose beautiful illustrations bring the (slightly surreal) story to life. For Sophie’s costume we needed a blue long sleeve tshirt, a Purple A-line pinafore dress, a big Blue Bow for her hair, paintent black shoes and those pink, blue and white harlequin tights. We had the long sleeve blue tshirt, and paintent black school shoes and I made the purple dress out of a pair of purple ladies vests (size 12) from tesco (£2 each in the clothes sale!), – I detached and sewed the two back panels together, as the front panels had a very low neckline for a 5 year old. She had a pair of white tights and a trip to the local haberdashery supplied the big blue ribbon for her hair and a blue and pink pots of dylon fabric paint. I made two forms for the tights by cutting two pieces of card into long ‘leg’ shapes, about 10cms by 60cms with rounded ends at the ‘feet’, I divided the forms up into squares and drew these on with marker pen. Then stretched the tights over them and spent some time painting in each of the squares with the blue and pink fabric paint. I was trying to be a bit thrifty with the paint and so painted them with as little colour as possible, the bonus of this was that they looked more like the rough colouring in Judith’s original illustrations.

Then as luck would have it the local oxfam had a soft tiger toy in their sale bin for 50p! He even growl’s when you squeeze his tummy. He is obviously much smaller than the huge, greedy tiger from the story but a good prop nevertheless!

 

T-shirt summer dresses

I made 4 of these yesterday, I think they took about a half an hour each, however I have had the t-shirts/bodysuits and fabric knocking around now since our last/only spell of hot weather in april. Same concept as the maxi dress I made for myself last year (https://mrspeacocksthingstomakeanddo.wordpress.com/2010/08/26/maxi-dress/) They are ‘sew’ easy (see what i did there?).

For Martha’s (4 year old’s) dresses, I took a pack of cheapy t-shirts – I think these were from sainsbury’s (3 for £7) and bought in some fabric for the skirts of the dresses. For the plain white t-shirt I bought a half a metre of fancy floral patterned cotton (£2.25), and for the patterned t-shirt  half a metre of plain old coloured cotton muslin (£1.12) . I made the skirt of each one first by sewing a shear stitch around the top of the skirt to gather it, on the floral patterned fabric which was a bit wider I sewed it twice to gather it up a bit more. To sew a shear stitch replace the bobbin thread with shearing elastic (Gutterman do this in matching colours to your fabric) – I hand wind my elastic bobbins and my machine stretches the elastic onto the bobbin as it winds and the stitch doesn’t work. Then when it was about the same length as the double the width of the t-shirt I swapped the bobbin for the usual thread and sewed the seam and the hem. After measuring her, I made Martha’s ‘skirts’ 40cm long. I marked a line with a pencil 20cm below the neckline all the way around the t-shirt then with the skirt the wrong way out and upside down (see picture) pinned it so the shear stitch followed the pencil line all around the t-shirt. If this sounds confusing my mantra while dressmaking is “good sides together sew on the wrong side”. Swapped the bobbin for the elastic one again and sewed it all the way around, then pulled the skirt down over the bottom of the t-shirt and pressed it down a bit.

I made Alice’s ones with bodysuit/baby vests (sainsbury’s again, 5 for £6.50 I think), -the ones with poppers at the crotch -which provides internal pants to cover her nappy, but in exactly the same way as above.

They are super cute and probably work out at about 3 quid each, maybe a fiver for the one with the fancy fabric, so pretty economical too! I would like to take this opportunity to thank my mum for letting me have the 2 hours required for this project by minding the nippers for me yesterday morning, otherwise I would have had the t-shirts and fabrics sitting about until next summer!

Cute as a button

I had the idea for a cute as a (button) t-shirt for a while and then was lucky enough to find a monster bag of embroidery silks and needles in a local charity shop for £2! The t-shirt came from tesco in a pack of 4 different colours and I fished the button out of the spares box. I printed the text in a simple script font and traced it through the t-shirt with a pencil. Then ’embroidered’ a running stitch over the text. The photo above is of my working out which of my cache of lovely coloured silks I wanted to use. I used the full thickness of silks not splitting them up (as I was always told to do) so had to use a needle with a fat hole and very pointy end.

I was very pleased with the result, a very simple t-shirt and a little bit different to the ones you see in the shops, and Alice likes to fiddle with the button and try and chew on it (she STILL doesn’t have any teeth!) – I hope I have stitched it on properly I don’t want her to swallow it, although I guess we would have the same problem with any of her tops with buttons on them!