The youngest too are 6 months and almost 1, and these two gorgeous girls are the ones I tend to make for most often. Making baby clothes is fast and rewarding!
This week, my boyfriends niece Edie turns 1, so it's an excuse to get crafting. Her mum asked me to make her birthday cake, so that will be coming up later this week. I was told that her cake was to be her present, and that means I'm not allowed to buy her anything.
Anyone else pick up on that loophole?
Buy.
It's sew time!
The cake is going to be decorated with monkey's at her mum's request, which gave me an idea. I like working with felt so I decided to appliqué a little tshirt with a monkey and her name. I got the plain pink tshirt from Amazon for around £2.00.
I spent a while on Pinterest searching 'monkey appliqué' to find an image I liked, and came up with this one -
I used the image just as a reference, and sketched out the face and ear shapes on light brown felt with a wash out fabric pen. Then I placed these on the dark brown felt and traced round the top to create the top of the head. I drew eye shapes on white and blue felt, an oval nose in dark brown, and cut out all the shapes. Next I hand drew the letters for her name, Edie, in purple felt taking care to keep them the same height, and cut these out.
I started the stitching by positioning the main face shape on the tshirt and pinning it in place. It helps to use plenty of pins to prevent any movement, but be careful not to stretch the tshirt while you pin. I decided to flip all the felt pieces to hide as much of the fabric pen as possible. While it should all wash out, I'd still rather not see it!
Once pinned, I stitched with cream cotton around the edges, creating a row of straight lines around the edge, like blanket stitch without the top bar.
After this, I stitched the ears in place using the same technique, leaving a very small gap between the pieces. Then I stitched the eyes on as I decided to use the same cream thread for these too.
Once this was done, I changed to brown thread, and stitched the top of the head and the nose in place, again leaving a small gap between the top of the head and the main piece.
The blue thread came next, so that I could stitch the centre of the eyes in place. These were the only pieces that I didn't pin in place first because the were so small.
At this point, the monkey's face is almost done, aside from it's mouth. This was my stumbling block, I couldn't decide how to form the mouth, so I skipped straight on to the letters. I kept using the blue thread to provide some contrast against the purple lettering, and also because I couldn't find my purple thread!
I spaced all the letters out first, getting the alignment right visually. Then I pinned the first and last letters. I checked there positions from the bottom of the tshirt with a ruler to make sure that they weren't completely out of line (they fell nicely 10cm from the bottom), and stitched these two first.
Once they were stitched, I aligned the D and I, pinned and stitched these too.
Now it was time to bite the bullet with the monkey's mouth. I sketched it on to the cream felt lightly with a pencil, and stitched it in the brown cotton using satin stitch.
So there we have it, one hand drawn, hand stitched, personalised appliqué tshirt for my niece ready for her party next Sunday. Now it just needs a wash and an iron and it's ready to go.
I do love a loophole!
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