T-shirt Applique: Aviary Tweet Birthday Gift!

Posted by Kashmira

Last month was my husband's birthday. I knew exactly what I wanted to gift him - a store bought plain t-shirt with a home made applique on it!

I spent a lot of time wondering what graphic I should do on his t-shirt. Then I remembered how that morning we'd seen birds of a feather flocked together on a newly washed car. No, just kidding. What I actually remembered was a few days ago, after looking at some cardinals on the trees outside my husband and son played a game while pretending to be daddy and baby cardinals. That's when the idea just flew into my mind - a cozy bird family!

In my excitement to get started I almost decided to wing it and just directly cut the shapes out of fabric. But yes, that would have been a bird-brained idea. Plus it would require real talon-t. So I created these pattern outlines on paper first.

Then I took my fabric and some Pellon Wonder-Under which is a fusible web. You iron it on the wrong side of fabric, cut the required shape, pull out the paper layer from the web and iron the applique on your main fabric. The fusible web gives your applique a bit of stiffness and prevents the fabric from bunching up while sewing.

Then I cut a couple of leaves from that fabric and appliqued them at the end of a twig I'd done using a zigzag stitch.

 Next I followed the same fusible web process to cut the bird shapes out of some funky and bold fabric. After cutting the first adult bird from fabric, I flipped the pattern piece over to get the other one facing the opposite way so that the two birds can look dotingly at their young 'un :)

I'm proud as a peacock to report that the birthday boy crowed in delight when he saw his gift :). As toucan see, it may not be migratest achievement, but it didn't turn out bad at all! This is aviary easy, fun and quick way to make a personalized gift. But you know what they say - talk is cheep! So I'm going to let you go and try it for yourself. Owl the best!