Decorate Children’s Clothes with a Laundry-Marker

Craft:

We recently went to a lovely children’s party where the children all got to decorate t-shirts with fabric paint. My daughter Poppy just loved hers, but decided that she wanted to “add more things” to her t-shirt once we’d returned home.

I was wondering how to easily to this – I don’t have any fabric paint at home – so I thought about using a laundry marker. So easy! I’d purchased one recently in order to name Poppy’s clothes for school.

So for my project this week, I asked Poppy to draw a few things on t-shirts for me! This sort of thing would be such a quick and easy (and lovely!) birthday gift for another child. You can probably also buy coloured permanent fabric markers, I just didn't get to any shops this week!

You could also easily use fleecy-lined jumpers for this project, and they would be a bit more suitable for winter than t-shirts!  I only had t-shirts in my cupboard though.

Actually, come to think of it, some little ‘cars’ driving up a ‘road’ drawn onto the leg of a pair of grey tracksuit pants for a little boy would be SO cute too!

These textas are totally permanent too! I've washed Poppy’s shirt from the party heaps of times and the drawings are here to stay!

Happy drawing!

Emma

Simple Cushion Using Children’s Art

Sewing:

This project was very easy-to-do, and not much sewing skill was required at all! The concept is quite similar to another project that I did last year using children’s artwork.

I just love the simple shapes and designs of the things that children draw. And it’s nice to try and use their pictures where possible, rather than putting them away in a drawer.

Firstly, I made this cushion the same way as my No-Zip Cushion Cover, and I just made it out of different scraps of white material that I had lurking in my cupboard. The only difference with THIS cushion is that I put two pieces of material together to make the front panel, so that the front of the cushion was going to be strong enough to 'hold' the sewing. This is a view of the cushion from the back.

Then I chose one of my daughter Poppy’s drawings to use – the bird! I’d also like to have a go at doing this horse too at some stage in the future. Isn’t it lovely? 

Just make sure you choose something simple, and something that will be easy to sew the outline of.

So, I traced the outline from the original picture onto some tracing paper.

Then I went over the outline on the other side, then flipped it over again and traced the outline again onto the material. I had to go through this process so that the duck was pointing the way I wanted it to be on the cushion!

Once I had the outline traced onto the material, it was just a matter of sewing over the pencil marks. I just used a basic cotton thread that I had purchased previously at Big W for one of my Christmas projects.

I went around once, sewing the outline, and then I went back over it and ‘sewed in’ the gaps. 

Not very technical, and I’m sure it’s not even the proper way to do it. Someone asked me, “is that called back-stitch?”, and I said “no, it’s called rough-stitch” !!

And I’m very pleased to say that my cushion won a Highly Commended in the Handicraft at my local Show over the weekend.

Happy sewing!

Emma