Another baby gift: Heart appliqued onesie

As a little extra to the baby quilt I showed you yesterday, I also made this appliqued heart onesie. Mama made a heart shirt for herself and I thought baby could use one to match.

I again faced my fears about stitching around the outside of the applique. It's not perfect, but that's OK. Emrbrace the messy!

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See also:

Quick applique tutorial

Geeky tote bag makeover (It's a TARDIS now!)

I have to laugh every time my husband takes a trip to the library with a teetering stack of books, DVDs and CDs in his arms. I've been telling him for months that a bag would make things much easier, but, you know, still no bag. I decided to make things easier for him and just make him a dedicated library bag. And then the best idea of all came to me: I had to make him a TARDIS bag.

For the un-initiated, the TARDIS is the travelling time machine in the shape of an old school British Police Box from the geeky sci-fi show Dr. Who. We are fans.

I went rummaging through my fabric stash, but came up short on "manly" fabrics. I was determined not to spend any money to make this and forced myself to work with what I already had in the house. Then I remembered I had a giveaway tote bag buried in a closet.

I'm not fond of sporting large logos, so it never saw much use. But the thing about logos like this is that you can cover them up. So with the bag already "done," all I had to do was decorate it.

The TARDIS is tall and skinny, so I created a cropped design to ensure my logo was fully covered. I found a photo on the internet for reference on the general shape and dimensions, but in the end I sort of just sketched out the silhouette on my own. I tried my hardest not to make this bag look too cute, but it was hard. Tote bags by nature are not exactly masculine.

I created a giant applique with some blue plaid fabrics from a couple of Dan's old dress shirts. (He busted through the elbows Incredible Hulk-style on three different shirts in like a month's time. Weird but true.) Overall, the shirts themselves were in good condition (except for the sleeves, of course), so plenty of useable fabric.

I did a zig zag stitch around all the edges. I let go of the idea that this stitching had to be perfect, and I'm really happy I went ahead with it. The messy look goes with the design. I'm sure it would have been a lot easier to do on a single piece of flat fabric, rather than pushing and pulling the whole bag through the sewing machine.

For the lettering, I used the font Gill Sans (the closest match I could find to the original) and printed it on iron-on transfer paper. I've worked with these plenty of times in the past with no issues, but this time, the iron-ons weren't sticking and looked splotchy. I'm not sure what went wrong, maybe the transfers were old, maybe it was the linen fabric I used for the background, but things were not working well.

I had printed doubles of all the words (just in case something got screwed up... ha), so I decided to apply a second transfer on top of the first. I figured I couldn't make it look any worse. I was a little bit off of the alignment, at first on accident and then on purpose. I think the double impression ended up looking great, though. Even better than if they had come out perfectly the first time.

The TARDIS has a blue light on the top and I was lucky enough to find this old blue button in my button jar to represent that. It has a reflective quality that makes it look like it's lighting up, which is kind of cool.

On the reverse side of the tote, I went with a simpler design -- just a thin band of linen to cover up the logo.

I hope Dan can tolerate the extra layer of geekiness added onto his library trips. He told me he was becoming more comfortable publicly embracing his geeky side, so I think he'll be OK.

Are you sitting on a giveaway/logo-ed item that you'd rather not use as is? What are you waiting for? Give it a makeover!

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See also:
Quick applique tutorial

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This is part of my 2011 Handmade Gift Challenge.

Mickey ears shirt + quick appliqué tutorial

You might have noticed from last week's Photo A Day post that we recently visited some friends in Florida.

In the weeks preceding our multi-day car trip, I was not concerned with how to keep a toddler occupied in the car or fed properly while on the road, but with finishing this Mickey ears shirt in time. Sometimes my priorities are a little jumbled. No matter. It got done, and it turned out supercute.

I've gotten a couple of questions about doing simple fabric appliqué, so below is a quickie tutorial for all those curious.
 

You'll need a fusible webbing product (I use one called Wonder Under made by Pellon), a piece of cotton fabric, an iron, a sharp fabric scissors and a shirt (or something else to appliqué on). Make sure you pre-wash your fabric and your garment.

I printed out my shape on regular printer paper and traced it onto the paper side of the webbing. This is going to be the backside of the appliqué, so if the shape is not symmetrical or if you are doing letters or numbers, you will need to trace a mirror image of your shape.

 

Next, iron the webbing onto the backside of the fabric, rough side down following the package instructions.

Then cut out the shape with a sharp fabric scissors, and iron it onto the shirt according to package instructions. I got this plain pink onesie at Hobby Lobby for $4.

The Wonder Under I use says the edges can be left as-is or sewn. The edges will fray a little with washings without sewing them, but I don't think it looks terrible. For this shirt, I hand stitched some embrodiery floss around the perimiter of the mouse ears, but it's purely decorative.

Robot taggie and onesie

When I ordered this robot fabric, I had plans for a project using small pieces. But when it came in the mail, it was so cute, I knew I had to come up with a project that would use a larger piece of it. So I decided to make a "taggie" as a gift for my new nephew.

Essentially, making a taggie is like making a pillow without any stuffing. I found a small piece of red fuzzy fabric in my stash and cut my robot fabric to the same dimensions.

I started out pinning loops of grosgrain ribbon to the fabric, the folds pointing inward, but the fabric was puckering and I didn't think the ribbons would stay straight when I was sewing up the side.

So I broke out the painters tape and it worked awesome. I was careful to use ribbons that weren't too narrow, and I made my tags short so they wouldn't get wrapped around little fingers. I also avoided using painted ribbons; babies shouldn't eat paint!

Because my robot fabric was white, the red fabric was showing through a bit, so I sandwiched a piece of off-white cotton between the red and the robots. In the end, it made the white whiter and the brights brighter. It also gave it some extra heft.

I stitched up three of the edges, turned it right-side-out, stitched the last side and then top stitched all around the edges.

The finished taggie is approximately 8 by 14 inches (I think... I forgot to measure it before gifting).

After I was finished, I couldn't resist cutting out one more of the robots from the leftover fabric to make a matching appliqued onesie.

p.s. The fabric I used was Beep Bots in Multi by Hoffman Fabrics.

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This is part of my Handmade Gift Challenge.

Ukulele appliqué pillow

My brother is a professional musician and can pretty much pick up any instrument and play it. A few years ago, he started playing ukuleles. (Real ones, not pillow ukuleles.)

I wanted to make him a fun throw pillow and what's more fun than a ukulele? (Maybe an accordion, but a ukulele appliqué was simpler.)

I found a photo of a ukulele on the internet, resized it and used it as a template for creating my appliqué. I ironed on the ukulele on the front piece of fabric before assembling the pillow itself.

I used a pillow I already had for a reference on the measurements. My pieces of fabric were approximately 14 by 20 inches, but the pillow itself is a bit smaller than that (obviously).

I used a masculine brown-on-black damask-type patterned fabric on the back and appliqué. I used thin cotton fabric (not home decor weight fabric), but I think it turned out OK.

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This is part of my Handmade Gift Challenge.