Project: Name Applique' Shirts for Siblings

      So I love for my little girlies to match.  I am probably a bit more obsessed with it than other moms to tell the truth (and, no, they do not match all of the time).  And now, I want to give gifts to other people that allow their children to match, because I regularly project my preferences onto others and give accordingly.  It seems that everyone I know is having babies;  John and I have commented often that we are in the baby stage of life and it just keeps going, which provides ample opportunity to come up with crafty gifts.  Here's my latest.
      Name Applique' Shirts



This family has obviously been very blessed, because they just welcomed baby Evan into the world.  Evan has three older siblings, Drew who is two and Jenna and Lydia who are four year old twins (and all precious to boot.)  I picked out fabric that I thought would coordinate well.



Then, I found a font that I liked.  I used Cafe Rojo, which I downloaded for free from Kevin and Amanda, a really cute blog with free fonts and lots of other fun as well.  For the toddler shirts, I used size 100 font, and I used size 80 for the baby onesie.



I printed out the names, after turning them to outline to save ink.



I cut out the letters I needed.  I quickly realized that since I was going to be tracing the letters, I didn't need to cut double of any of them.  That saved me some time.



I ironed my fabric onto the fusible webbing and went through the basic steps of applique, which I already outlined in this post.  Once I had the fabric ready to go, I traced the letters backwards onto the paper.  I made it so that each letter would be connected, so I would just be cutting out one whole name, instead of individual letters.  (I did this for another baby a while back, and this picture is from that project.)



Then, I cut it out, peeled of the paper and ironed it on.  Because I have a very average sewing machine and not a ton of patience, I realized that it would be easier to hand stitch these names on, instead of trying to turn that many times.  So I used the most basic stitch to go around the outline of the name.



Because I wasn't sure that the name alone was enough presence on the shirt, I decided to embellish it a little more and applique on a part of the pattern from the fabric.  I did some without it for another family and liked the way they both came out.  All in all, I like the simplicity and the personalization of this concept.  I am thinking of using it on Easter baskets for the girls.



Happy crafting!