TUTORIAL FOR EMBELLISHING A TEE

My friend asked me to do a tutorial for embellishing a Tee.

I made a few of these for my granddaughters for their birthday with a little knit skirt to go with it. They are easy and fun to do, and only take about 30 - 40 minutes once you have your materials. This is size girls 16 which fits about an 11-13 year old. 1. Buy a plain T-shirt, I got these at Wal-mart or Target for about $5. 3. Find a remnant or piece of flimsy material that can be washed without fraying. You will only need about 6 or 8 inches of the entire width of the fabric - selvage to selvage4. Fold the fabric accordion style so that you can cut circles about 2 inches diameter or so.3. I used a cup as my pattern to draw circles.4. Pin the circles before cutting, it helps5. They might not look perfect, but they will work fine. Make sure you discard the top circle with the pen marking on it, or you can cut around it, you won't want pen on your circles.6. Take some netting, a color of the shirt or lighter. You are going to sew the circles on the netting, not the shirt.7. Fold each circle in half and pin to the netting in the design you want8. Make sure you start at the bottom and work up so the circles don't tuck under. 9. Place you design over your shirt to get the desired effect you want to create

10. You are going to hand sew the circles on the back of the netting. Just take one stitch and knot it in the center of each circle. The stitching should not show on the front. 11. Make a knot in each stitch

11. it should look like this on the back when it is done

12. It will look like this on the front with no stitches showing

13. Place the netting on the Tee where you want it to be placed. Pin in place. Using thread to match the Tee, stitch the netting to the Tee with a Knit stitch.

*It is very important you use a 'knit stitch' or the child will tear the embellishment off while pulling it over her head*** ( If your machine doesn't have a knit stitch programed in, use a tiny zig-zag stitch - but this is a really good time to read your manual.)

14. Gently lift the circles while you are stitching so your seam is under the circles

14. Trim away the extra netting

16. Now make a little knit skirt to go with it

I guess my camera is left-handed, why is this upside down? Anyway, here is a cute outfit to make for just about nothing!

If you want me to post how to make the yoga skirt, let me know! It's easy too!

HAPPY SEWING

THESE ARE THE PEOPLE THAT WE WILL MISS

My children surprised me on my birthday at a restaurant downtown for dinner Rock and I have often wanted to spend time with our adult children alone, and it was a wonderful evening. I loved being with them. (I kept bragging to the waiter that these were my children.) Joel, my oldest son with his wife Jenn. The awesome parents of 3 of my awesome grandchildren

Brooke with her husband Tom, awesome parents to 5 of my awesome grandchildren Smith with his wife, the awesome parents of four gorgeous granddaughters Sage with her husband Dr. Chad, parents of 5 awesome grandchildren

Ben and Lisa live in California and could not be there. Boo Hoo but they were there in spirit. They will be having their first baby in September. She will be #26 for us!

Seth and Cairen who are the awesome parents of two gorgeous granddaughters, and a little grandson bun who will be born any day now.

Amber and Jake awesome parents to 3 awesome grandchildren

Erin and Jordan, awesome parents to 2 awesome grandchildren

Thanks kids for making my day special! I love you for being the best kids a mom could ever have! And I am grateful you all turned out so well in spite of a crazy mother!

ADVENTURES AND ADDICTIONS

My daughter suggested to me that maybe my "Addiction" to sewing was not helping me balance my life.

Meaning the sewing was interfering with other activities

both physical and spiritual that I should be doing more of......

Sew.....I mean; "SO"...I am going to list some things I do besides sew:

• I play with my friends. In fact I have a monthly sewing group that I meet with and we show each other the fun things we are working on. Here is the room in Annie's house where we all sew. (Yes, she is living my dream life....)



• We have "show and tell" This quilt below was made by one of the women in the group. ( No I could never make that - She is amazing..)
  

My Friend Shauna made this one;

We always have a nice lunch

Sometimes we make things for each other. One of the ladies made this cute purple bear for me. She is really good at crochet.

I made this doll for an different lady in our group. She is going to decorate a Christmas Tree for the Festival of Trees and have all her clients at Dave's Bernina in Provo make dolls like this for the tree.

• I have grandchildren
  and they love to wear cute stuff......Princess Skirts and Yoga skirts.
• Okay I found some material in my stash and what little girl doesn't like a skirt?

• My friends keep getting older sew I get them something little to celebrate
  

I made a few little make-up purses for my friends. They are small-ish but they are fun to embroider on my machine and then I can personalize them with their names.

• My Daughter's and D-in-laws keep having babies
  

I made a diaper bag for my daughter-in-law who is having a baby in a few weeks. I also made her a quilt but I forgot to snap a pic. Notice the flower on the front, it was something I learned to do in my sewing group. I always add a key ring to my purses.

• I need some clothes to take to Africa
  Yes, I am madly trying to get ready to go to Africa. I need 2-years supply of clothes that can pack easily
  
  
  
  

  

  This material has been in my stash for probably 20 years. I figured if clothes you wear on a mission are like clothes you wear when you are pregnant, you don't want anything really spiffy, just utilitarian. And in 2 years it will be ready for the trash, right? And if I am lucky it might be back in style again, what do you think?

• OKAY, SO I ADMIT I SLIPPED UP - Yes, I took a two-day quilt class last week. It was called the "UGLY QUILT" class because you use only your ugly material that you don't want to throw away. I didn't have to buy a single thing thanks to my efforts of collecting material for the last 40 years.
  
  
  
• we all cut up our squares and traded our ugly fabric
  

Then we created squares using the light and darks. We had several ladies in the class sewing away....

I have all my squares ready to sew together. Here they are on my wall. I might do a little tweaking here and there after I look at it a little more.

Sew there you go, haven't I made my case that my life is a little balanced and I don't sew all the time?

BALANCED LIFE?

It really is my goal to work more on my spiritual and physical balance along with my addiction. But I do listen to my scriptures on my I-Pod while I sew. That counts a little. BUT I still haven't figured out how to balance my sewing maching to the top of the treadmill. Sew I have more to work on I guess.