Friday, January 29, 2010

Making applique shirts

Trying something new again. I thought I would try making applique shirts with Africa on them (more about these shirts HERE). So...I picked up some t-shirts for the girls and myself and we decided on some cute material and headed home with something called "wonder under" to figure out how to make these.First I found an image of Africa online and printed it. I enlarged it for my shirts and used the standard size for the girls. I made a template out of card stock to use to make my design.

I traced the shape on the fabric with a pencil. I wanted to chose fabric that would be forgiving with any mistakes. Then I cut a piece of the wonder under about the same size as the fabric. Then followed the directions on how to iron it onto the fabric to make the applique. It was really quick and easy.
Then I cut out my shape and gently peel off the paper backing. The material is left with a shiny backing that will iron on and stick to the shirt.
After positioning the applique in the right spot, follow directions on wonder under packaging and iron onto the shirt. This sticks the applique onto the shirt so I could do a ZIGZAG stitch around the edge of the shape.

Here is Tissy's final result. I think it is adorable. I have more pictures on my adoption blog (HERE) of the other ones. It is just too cute. I thought these would be cute with hearts for Valentine's Day, or flowers for spring. Lots of ideas. (I did wash and dry the shirts before I attached the applique, just in case there was shrinkage).

5 comments:

oneblessedmamma said...

We used to use Wonder Under for making sorority shirts. It fit our poor college girl budgets. Same technique, except we used paint to seal the edges since none of us sewed then :-). Your Africa shirts turned out GREAT.

Tim and Susan said...

So cute. How creative!

Lee and Bev said...

I especially like the brown on black - very classy!

Cindy said...

what a great idea! I also like the brown one! great job!

K-Sue said...

These look great. Good job! Do you plan to make shirts for the boys, too?