A great gift...

Anyone die of anticipation over my cliff hanger yesterday!? No? Huh? Oh well. : )

Etsy has become a favorite shopping site for my friends and me as of late. I absolutely love all the handmade children's things, especially the bows at my mom's shop. : ) Another thing I love are the personalized t-shirts they have for kids, either with cute holiday themed pictures (like our turkey shirts), or the kids' names, or the number of their age, etc. Well one thing I found was t-shirts with their first initial on it. After I received the turkey shirts I ordered I felt like this is something I could totally do myself. Now mind you I have never sewed in my life, despite all my mother's begging growing up. I learned to knit for a short bit, but barely finished one scarf (my mom finished it) and had had enough. But I was determined. I would love for my kiddos and those of close friends to have theses shirts and I felt like I could totally do it! Never mind that I decided to tackle this during my busiest week ever (small group dinner, kids small group play group, preschool party, speech twice, two cookie parties at our house, best friends Christmas party, and our own adult Christmas party).

Thankfully one of my friends had a sewing machine she was able to loan me but she has to read the book each time before she sews. So I had the supplies, just needed to learn to sew. Much to the hub's delight I had my mom try to teach me via Skype. After a few unsuccessful attempts on my own she was able to help me get it threaded correctly, gave me pointers, and sent me off to practice. My lovely husband video taped our conversation because he thought it was all too funny. I'll have to get the video from him.

So I practiced doing one letter on scrap material and did a pretty good job. I felt ready to tackle my project (which was 6 shirts for friends and 2 for my girlies)! I did a pretty good job, few mistakes here and there, but not super noticeable. My biggest goof was when I sewed the front of sweet Mackenzie shirt to the back. Oops. Luckily I just used Brynn's shirt to finish up hers and later ran out for another t-shirt for Brynn.

I was beyond excited to give them to our friends and I hope they all like and enjoy them!!

Here is the lovely sewing machine my dear friend Kelli let me use, along with a manual. : )

My materials. I looked everywhere for white shirts, but to find enough in the sizes I needed, the only one I came pretty close to (had to substitute some turtle necks) were red. So blue fabric for our one boy in our group and the other for all the girls.

Here is my practice sheet before I moved on to the real thing.

So first I made the letters in photoshop the size I wanted, traced them on the fabric and cut out each letter.

Next you use HeatNBond, cut them out to the size of the shapes, iron them on the letters...

...then peel away the white to reveal the sticky stuff....

...then iron straight on to the shirt! After that the sewing happens. Should've had the hubs capture a picture of that, oh well! : )

Here was my lovely mistake...

I tried to salvage it and ended up making a hole in the shirt. : (

And here are the 8 finished projects!!

Funny how I hated homemade things growing up and always wanted store bought. Now I know the treasure of handmade and so hope that rubs off on the girls. Perhaps I will keep practicing and get as good as my mom. No, probably not, but one can dream! : )