Simple Appliqued Sweatshirt

 Hello Readers. Today is election day. I hope you can get out and vote if you are in the U.S. I wanted to make a shirt for the day that went with the voting theme. (I really love a shirt with a theme.) I wanted spell out the word vote but this idea would work for any word. (Thankful for Thanksgiving, Love for Valentine's Day, Luck for St. Patrick's Day...) I don't have a fancy embroidery sewing machine so let me show you how I did this.

Vote!

 

This sweatshirt was plain and simple and it would be a perfect base for adding some letters. 

 

I had a small piece of cotton fabric with the names of the states. It would be perfect for my letters. And the fabric looked pretty good with my sweatshirt. 

 

The thing that made this project so simple was fusible interfacing. Follow the instructions on the packaging to iron this onto the fabric you want to make your letters out of. 

I used my iron to fuse the interfacing to my fabric. I put my fabric face down and put the bumpy side facing the fabric. I used some scrap white cotton as a barrier between that and my iron. I made my 4 small rectangles because I knew I was going to make 4 letters.

 

The interfacing made the fabric a little thicker and stiffer. It would be easier to handle, cut and sew like this. 

I used a ruler to help me sketch out my letters. I made boxy letters with straight lines. They were easy to draw and they will be easier to sew to my sweatshirt. I used pencil because it will wash out easily.

I cut out all my letters following the pencil lines I drew. 

I arranged my letters on my sweatshirt and made sure I liked the arrangement. These are off center for 2 reasons.

 1. It looked more fun to me. 

2. If I try to line the letters up perfectly straight and they shift even a little in the sewing process, it will be very obvious. Doing it this way will make it easier later. 

I pinned the letters to the sweatshirt. I put pins in all around the letters and made sure they were in different directions to keep the letters in place the best I could while I was sewing.

I used a wide zigzag stitch to attach the letters to the shirt. I sewed all around the edges of the letters. This will keep the edges from fraying and keep the shirt in good condition wash after wash. 

I used different color thread for each letter just for fun. The colors you use are up to you. 

When I was done it was a little wrinkled and the letters had shifted a bit in a couple spots but it's OK. I am not trying to launch a rover to Mars, it doesn't have to be perfect. We are here for a good time, don't stress. I loved how my shirt turned out.

 

 I ironed the whole shirt to smooth out the letters.

My shirt was finished. 

 

Thanks for reading along, now go make something fun for yourself. And vote if you can.

***Year End Update***- I liked this lettering so much. I planned to try it again.

 

 

 

Embroider Your T-Shirt

 Hello Readers. T-shirts are usually simple and sometimes even a little plain. That is part of their charm but let's see if we can dress one up in a fun way. I wanted to add some detail and color to this shirt. Let me show you what I did. It was simple and easy to recreate even with no real embroidery skills.

This is a fun way to jazz up a T-shirt.

You will need a t-shirt to begin this project. You will also need some embroidery thread and an large embroidery needle. 

 

I got my embroidery thread from Walmart but you can get it at any sewing supply or craft shop. It is inexpensive and there are so many colors to choose from. 

 

I used a large embroidery hoop to hold the front of my t-shirt while I stitch. You could try to do this without the hoop but I think it will be much harder to hold and stitch the shirt. 

 

I just needed the hoop to hold the design area on the front of my shirt, not the back of the shirt. If the design was smaller, I could have used a smaller hoop. 

 

I put the thick strand of embroidery thread through the eye of the needle. The embroidery thread is actually several strands of thread together. I used all of them so the stitches would be thick and really stand out on my shirt. 

 

I stitched in and out along the edges of the letters on my shirt in light blue. You can see I left space between the stitches. This was really simple sewing and didn't require any serious skills or training.

 

I used a darker blue to fill in the stitches between the light blue stitches. I made large stitches because my design was large and I wanted the stitches to really have a lot of visual pop and two colors really pops a little more than one color. 

 

I stitched along all the lettering to give each letter a blue outline. When I was done stitching around each letter, I tied a knot inside the shirt and cut off the excess thread. 

 

I wanted all the lettering to have the blue outlines so I took my time and stitched all the letters. This took almost an hour. I watched TV while I worked. ( A "Murder She Wrote" re-run.)

 

I cut my shirt around the neck, sleeves and waist. I like to open up and loosen the neckline on most of my t-shirts like this.

 

My shirt was finished and I liked the blue colors I picked. You can pick any color you like but some embroidery thread can leach dye in the washer. I chose this dark color shirt because it needed some color added but it also would hide any trace of blue dye that gets on the t-shirt fabric of the shirt. If you want to embroider a white shirt, you could try to wash your embroidery thread before you do any sewing so that the excess dye would be removed in the wash. 

 

Thanks for reading along, now go make something fun for yourself.
 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Attaching Door Handles

 Hello Readers. I added doors to my bedroom closet. The only were so pretty but something important was missing. Can you see it? Handles. That's right, There were no handles to use to open the doors. Lets fix that right now. 

  These doors didn't have any handles!

I loved these doors so much. I did not even notice that there weren't handles on the doors right away. It didn't occur to me that I needed a handle to pull on to open the doors. 

How did I not notice there weren't handles or knobs on the doors? I wasn't really thinking about it, but I was pulling on the window lattice work to open the doors. That isn't what the lattice work was made for. Let's do this the right way and add some fun new handles.

I chose these long narrow gold tone door handles. These were on Amazon, but you can choose any handle you might want. There are endless options out there. We held them up to the door to check the size and shape on the doors. These handles seemed to fit the door well. The doors are not standard size, they are more narrow. The narrow handles just looked right on the doors to me. 

 

These handles came in a box of 5 pairs. I only needed 1 pair so... if anyone needs some door handles, let me know. I have 4 pairs to spare. 

 

The door handles had 2 spots for screws to attach them to the door. I used a piece of paper to make a template of the holes. This will help mark the spots on the door easily. Guessing where the holes are supposed to go is going to cause me to drill them incorrectly, out of place, or off-center. 
 

We chose the height to match the height of all the door knobs in my house. That seemed the most uniform height and it would be more cohesive and easiest for people to reach and use easily. We made one starter hole to begin attaching our handles. 

 

Once one hole and screw were half in place we could see exactly where the second hole needed to be drilled into the door. This was a big help to me. Thanks Mr. Template!

 

The first door holes can be used to make sure that the second door handle will be attached at the same height. The 2 handles will sit next to each other when the doors are closed, I wanted them to look even in height. Using a level is a big help to double check the placement of the handles. Similar here.

 

All the holes were drilled all the way through the doors with our power drill and a drill bit that was slightly smaller than the screws we were using. 

 

 The screws go in the back of the door and through the door. I used the screws that came with the handles, they were about 2 1/2 inches long, long enough for this project. The screws go through the doors and screw into the handles. This keeps the handles securely attached to the doors. 

  

The doors are finished and can be opened easily with the handles. Like they should be. Thanks for reading along, now go make something fun for yourself. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Make a Picture Frame Wreath

 The change of season and cooler weather might make you want to decorate a bit. Summer is over and the autumn is here. The changing colors are always inspiring to me. Let's make a pretty picture frame wreath for my front door.

It's Fall Y'all! Let's decorate the front door.

I started with this simple picture frame. It is kind of old a beat-up. (Aren't we all at this point?) That's OK, it's going to look great on my front door with some other decor pieces. 

 

I had some white ribbon that I would use as well. The frame is white and the ribbon will look nice with it no matter what else I add on to it.

 

I also grabbed all the fall color items I had on hand at home. I wanted items that were fall colored or themed. I had a place mat, a couple needle point projects and 2 potholders on-hand around the house that I could use. 

 

I thought the blue piece would look good with the flowers I found. They don't need to fit in the frame exactly. They can layer on top of each other. This combo was a good option.I could add that white ribbon and it would all work together.

 

I thought these items would combine well too. The orange and red colors were perfect together. These pieces will layer together with the frame well too. I decided to use these because they had the traditional colors of fall. These can all layer into the picture frame together easily. 

 

To begin, I used a safety pin to attach the place mat to the needle point piece. 

 

You can just barely see the pin through the clasp at the top of the embroidery hoop around the needle point piece. The safety pin will hold them together really well.

 

I added a piece of ribbon around the clasp and tied it in a bow. It will hide the fastenings and look pretty too.

 

You can use duck tape to attach the items to the back of the frame if you prefer. These are all light weight items and the tape seemed very secure. 

 

You can also use a hot glue gun like I did for the twine I attached to the top of the frame to hang it up with. Hot glue holds very well and it is a good choice too.

 

I used a wreath hook over the top of the door to hang this new wreath on my door. I liked the fall colors. You can use almost anything to make a "wreath", you just need to layer a few pieces together.
 

I thought I could tuck a few cream colored flowers in between the frame and the hook. Just for fun. Using items of similar colors usually looks great together so add on anything you like.  I hope you can enjoy the change of seasons where you are. And thanks for reading along.