Valentine's Tie Shirts

Valentine's Day is around the corner, and I wanted some cute shirts for the boys. I love little boys shirts with ties on them, and thought a tie shirt with a little heart cut out of it would make for a cute Valentine's shirt.

I looked all over for a plain red long-sleeve shirt for this project and couldn't find one. I was about to give up when I remembered reading a blog post (which I didn't bookmark and can't find now) with a tutorial for turning a short-sleeve shirt into a layered-look long sleeve tee. So, I grabbed one of my old t-shirts and cut some sleeves out of them to sew into the short sleeves.

I used my Silhouette Cameo to design and cut the ties, and ironed them onto the shirts with fusible interfacing. Then zigzag stitched around them. Quick fun project, and the boys look cute in their new shirts.

Of course, just 'cause you dress them up, it doesn't mean they'll behave! Boys will be boys!

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Fabric Box Dresser Organization.

For the sake of my craft space (and my budget), I won't buy fabric unless I have a project in mind for it. If I find a fabric I like, I will do whatever I can to think up a project to justify the purchase. That's how The Monkey ended up with these cute boxes to help organize his dresser.

I fell in love with these fabrics the first time I saw them at Hipstitch. I made several trips to the store before I finally bit the bullet and bought them. I turned them into little boxes to put in his dresser so his socks and underwear don't get lost among all his pajamas. Yeah, I know, quite a stretch to justify the purchase of these fabrics.

I roughly followed my own fabric box tutorial, with a few modifications. I didn't need quite as much structure in these boxes, so I used fusible fleece instead of a heavy-weight interfacing. And rather than sewing the lining in inside out and turning the boxes, I placed the lining in the box, wrong sides together. Then bound the boxes with some red grosgrain ribbon I had in my stash.

I love the way they came out. And now there are no more complaints from The Monkey that he can't find his socks when he gets dressed in the morning!

Christmas Round Up: iFlirt

Baby Brother is quite the flirt. He loves to smile and babble at people, then coyly turn and bury his head in my shoulder, only to look up and grin again. It charms everyone he meets.

After watching him flirt with all the other passengers and flight attendants on a trans-Atlantic flight, I joked that I needed to find him a shirt that says "I flirt." And as soon as I said it out loud, I knew exactly what I needed to do.

We're big Mac fans around here, and I thought iFlirt, a play on the i-everything from Apple would be really cute. I wanted white letters on a black shirt. When I went looking for a shirt to use, I found this black turtleneck a la Steve Jobs, and it was perfect.

I found a font that is very close to the font Apple uses for iPods, iPhones, iPads etc. and traced the letters onto fusible interfacing. I cut them out of the fabric/interfacing and ironed them on to the front of the shirt. It was a quick, simple project, and I love the end result.