Eric Carle Themed Shirts for Lucky's Birthday

After making Lucky some Eric Carle apparel for his birthday, I realized that Rowdy should have something to wear on theme, too!  (I had the knit hungry caterpillar hat already.)

I've never appliquéd onto a onesie before. Well, there's a first item for everything.  I'm expecting this to be a little tighter to work around the machine than a T-shirt but with some luck hopefully it will go okay.

First, I stuck some two sided iron on transfer interfacing to the back of the fabric and then I cut out the red bird.  I ironed the bird onto the onesie and used a zig-zag stitch and white thread to secure it down.  (Stitch 8, Width 4, distance 1.5)  Once I started sewing, I was much more confident for this applique piece.  

I hoped that this would survive washing okay.  When I made the Tie Dye T-shirts for my Wellesley Reunion I just ironed on the applique and didn't stitch it down.  They came off in the wash!  I waited to wash the shirt until after Lucky's birthday but it survived pretty well.  The bird came out slightly wrinkled but a hot iron would fix that up.  I don't think I could have hoped for anything better when attaching a large piece of woven fabric to a knit Tshirt.  

Lucky was so excited when he saw his little red bird on his birthday!  

The rowdy red bird was pretty excited, too.  

While I was working on the red bird onesie, I also decided to make Lucky a second "3" shirt to wear.  This way he has one (the brown bear one) to wear to his party and a second to wear to his friend's party that takes place on his actual birthday.  I don't want to risk washing my new appliques the day before the party so this will let me have a backup in case the first gets cake on it.

The second "3" is going on a size 2T shirt.  I had the 3 all drawn out on iron on transer paper but I accidentally drew the 3 forwards in stead of backwards.  I peeled off the 3 and put it on the RS of the fabric and cut it out that way.

I spent forever trying to center the "3" on the shirt before ironing it down.  Once I had it placed correctly, the ironing and zig zag stitching went quickly.

I really like making shirts.  I know that I want to make some for Rowdy's birthday but that feels far enough away that I don't want to worry about it yet.  Although now that I'm writing this blog post I realize that I need to start looking for base shirts he can wear...

Lucky liked his second shirt a lot, although he was a little bummed that this one did not also have a brown bear on the back.  

In my next post I will FINALLY share the details of how I made these fun party hats out of card stock and fabric.  It was a really easy way to get us all on theme.  Plus we finally got our first family photos of all 5 Browns!