If you've been around my blog long, you know that crafty shirts are one of my favorite things to make for my boys! I have made them for almost every holiday, birthday, and special occasion for the past few years. This year I decided to some cute shirts for St. Patrick's Day...but they needed to be church friendly since St. Paddy's day falls on Sunday this year. So I picked up a couple green polo shirts from Target and added a cute, but subtle shamrock to each of them using a reverse applique technique.
The first step is to decided what kind of design you want. I decided to go with a smallish clover with each of the boys' initials placed inside the clover. I found a clip art clover, opened it up in photoshop, added the letters on top of the clover, and then printed out the page.
To get the shirt ready, decided where you want your design to be. Then pin your fabric of choice to the inside of the shirt with the right side of the fabric facing the shirt. Sounds kind of confusing, but the picture on the left should help a little. Then turn your shirt right side out and pin your design to the shirt making sure that all of the design fits where you pinned the fabric inside.
The next step is to sew around the edges of your design. For my shirts, I sewed around the clover and also around the outside of each letter.
Once you finish sewing, simply pull up the paper to reveal your design.
Now, comes the fun part! Using a small pair of scissors, carefully cut out the inside of your design as close to the stitching as you can get without cutting it and without cutting through the layer of fabric underneath. I usually start in the center of the design because it is easiest to separate the shirt from the fabric. For my shirts I had to go around the inside of the clover and also around the outside edge of the boys' initials.
And this is what the finished project looks like! You can also start out easy with just a solid shape so you don't have to deal with cutting around the initial. I think they turned out pretty cute for a basic polo, a scrap of fabric, and a little bit of time!
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