Kid's Birthday Shirt

My big boy would like you to know he's 4 (see the fingers?).
I made his birthday shirt. For comparison on how big he's gotten, here is last year's.

I actually made the whole shirt this time, instead of embellishing a purchased one. I found two XL black and gray striped ladies' tops at Target for $2 each and snatched them up. (I still have a shirt and a half to fashion something cute for me!) To make the "pattern", I traced a shirt he has that fits well. The neckline came out a little big because I tried to reuse the ribbing from the original tee shirt and was worried about it not fitting over his melon head. I should have just gotten more at JoAnn's. Oh well. It looks cute over the red t shirt here. Maybe I'll redo the ribbing with a wider piece.

For the embellishment, I used the freezer paper stenciling method. I've never used that method before (first stenciling attempt here resulting in this) It was quite easy, and worked really well with all the tiny cutouts I made. Great tutorials for both freezer paper stenciling and editing an image for a stencil are here, on Dana's awesome site.


Obviously, I actually did the stenciling on a separate piece of fabric which I then stitched on top of the t shirt for more impact. With the exception of the neckline being large, I'm really happy with this shirt, and I know my sweet boy loves it. He wants to wear his "drum shirt" every day.


In other news, I finally sat down for 15 minutes tonight to make a buttonhole and hems to finish up my linen/wool pants. Can't wait to photograph them tomorrow!!