Embellished Dress-up Shirt

The back of the shirt

I just finished embellishing a fun dress-up shirt for my friend Sonya's son. He loves trucks and dinosaurs and now he'll have his own dress-up shirt to play in.

I found the truck at kidsplaycolor.com It's a simple dump truck that I could copy and then embellish. I drew the truck onto freezer paper. Not an easy thing to do since I was at the fall retreat and didn't have a printer. I cut out the truck shape and used the freezer paper template to copy it onto the shirt. I then sewed the truck outline in red and then embroidered the tires in red and black. The metal-looking beads are perfect for the tire rims. The grill of the truck is sewn with metallic thread from the bobbin.

This week I read  Lara Buccella's Crafted Appliqué book. I had seen all of the blog posts about her book and was looking forward to reading it. Her technique is really great. I used it for both the truck and the dinosaur. Frankly I hadn't even though of using appliqué in this project until I read her book. It was the perfect technique.

Once I finished the appliqué, I used a black fabric pen to outline the windows and finish the tires. I also added three rows of red seed beads.

A very cool dump truck!

The front of the shirt

For the front of the shirt I found an easy dinosaur to draw from fourpencil.com It's a Diplodocus.

To cover the Diplodocus,  I took out all of the colourful scraps I could find. I used the Crafted Appliqué technique,and then cut and ironed the fabric pieces in place, I used a multi-coloured King Tut thread to zig-zag stitch around each fabric piece. I embroidered the mouth and the eye with black embroidery floss.

The multi-coloured Diplodocus

What I learned:

• I really enjoyed making this piece. I wasn't sure how I was going to fill in the truck, so I was really glad to read about the Crafted Appliqué technique.
• I didn't think that I could draw both the truck and the Diplodocus from the computer screen. I am very pleased with the results. 

I've linked this post to the following parties - please check them out! Can I get a Whoop Whoop? Off the Wall Fridays, Oh Scrap! MOP Monday, Monday Making, Main Crush Monday, Slow Sunday Stitching, Let's Bee Social, Midweek Makers, Needle & Thread Thursday, Off the Wall Friday, Fabric Frenzy Friday.