Top-Toberfest: Embellished T-shirt for Boys

Yep, that's right.  It's Top-toberfest time.  Hopefully some of you are as excited for it as I am.  I am really excited to share some of the tops that I've been working on, along with some amazing projects from some guest contributors.   We have several very talented ladies that were willing to help me out with the series, and share their talents with us.  I hope that as their guest posts come up you'll take the time to tell them how much you enjoy their work, after all, positive feedback is always encouraging.

For Day One of this year's Top-toberfest I thought that I'd share a little t-shirt revamp that I worked on for Clark.  I picked up a basic pocketed t-shirt at Children's Place for $1.99 on sale-Wahoo! Unfortunately it was short sleeved and plain, but fortunately we can change that.

                                          

When I was trying to decide what to do to dress it up, I had several different techniques running through my head...should I stencil it, use embroidery thread on it, distress it, bleach it, etc.  In the end I stuck to one basic process that gave it a whole new look.  With the help of some scrap knit fabric, some heat and bond iron on adhesive, and my sewing machine; I added some details to the pockets and the sleeves.

If you are interested in using the same process to embellish a top you will want to gather your fabric scraps. Apply iron on adhesive to the back side of your scraps prior to cutting out the individual shapes.

I cut a small band of green material to run down the center of the pocket, and adhered it following the manufacturers directions.  The extra fabric that you see at the top of the pocket was folded into the pocket and adhered as well.

 Once I had adhered my first piece of material I used some contrasting thread to stitch around the shape. This step isn't necessary, the heat and bond secures the material, it was purely for decoration.  Yes, the pocket was stitched shut...maybe I'll find  fewer rocks in my washing machine now.

I then went to my computer and printer and printed off some numbers in a font that I liked.  I believe that I used Princetown Let.  After printing them off I used them as a template to cut out my shapes.  You can tell that the shapes have some dimension to them.  Using heat and bond, I adhered the gray knit to a piece of white felt that I had on hand.  As I look at it now I don't know why I didn't use gray felt.

I then positioned them, and stitched them in place.  I didn't use any heat and bond on the backside of the felt.  The felt is pretty good at staying where it is supposed to be, and too many layers of heat and bond causes my sewing machine to skip stitches.

After adding the numbers I decided that the pocket needed a little bit more to balance it out.  I added a small strip of gray to the top edge of the pocket and stitched it in place.

I used the same technique as above to add two stripes to each of the sleeves.  Aren't they cute?  I also created a faux undershirt look by making some stitch on long sleeves in green.  I haven't created a tutorial for adding the sleeves, but fortunately Terra of Mama Says Sew, has done all of the work for me, find her tutorial for adding sleeves and length to a t-shirt here.  So there you have it, a basic tee dressed up and adapted for the change of seasons.

Do you have some great blouse, top, tee, or tunics that you've made this year.  I'd love to have you join in the fun by linking up all of your tops in the Top-toberfest link party.  It's one place that we can share our ideas and be inspired.

I'll be linking here, if I'm not too lazy.