Personalized Birthday Shirt for Girls

This past September brought the celebration of Baby D's first birthday (eep!), and like every other new parent (B and E are steps, so I'm a first timer with D), I wanted him to have an adorable birthday outfit. Back when he was only 4 or 5 months old, my mom and I were shopping in Target and ran across their adorable appliqued onesies that just had a cutely boyish 1 on the front, and then the soft blue stretchy crowns for the birthday boy. So he was set.

Then when it got closer to E's birthday, my head cleared from the new mom clouds and I had sudden inspiration for a birthday shirt to make her day special for her.

First I grabbed a hot pink tshirt from Hobby Lobby (I think it was $3.99 and then I had a coupon from the newspaper for 40% off one item. Sweet!). Then I took a section of the newspaper that I wasn't going to read (sports?). Keeping the pages together, I unfolded the section top to bottom, so it looks like a closed book. Using the top half, I free handed a large 5, making sure to keep it's sizing within the size of her shirt (for E, the newspaper allowed the perfect amount of space for a 5 to cover her shirt without being too big).

Being VERY careful while cutting out, making sure to keep the pages together, I taped around the edges to make sure the pages stayed together and the shape stayed put. Can you tell I could only find painters tape when I needed it? :)

Using the number as a template, I used the bottom half (ok, so in the picture it's the top half) of the newspaper to create the number again. This one I am NOT cutting out, but instead using it to get the shape and size of my letters. I drew these in pencil first so I could erase, but then had to go over in permanent marker so I could see to cut them out. And so you could see them in the picture :)

Tape the edges of the letters, too so they stay together. I did this because I prefer a thicker pattern piece to trace and cut versus the tissue paper thin ones. If you're good with the thin paper patterns, feel free to skip the multi layers and the taping.
 **Ok, I appear to have stopped taking pictures for a while. But next I used the pattern pieces I just made to cut out the letters and number from the fabrics I'd purchased. I chose a pretty white material with a tiny white flower pattern for the number and then a fat quarter stack that luckily had 5 coordinating fabrics for the letters. Once those were cut out, I used iron on interfacing to attach the number to the shirt and then the letters on top of the number the way I had drawn them on the newspaper.**

Using thin black ribbon and Aileen's Fabric Glue Pen, I carefully outlined each letter to make them pop. I also outlined the 5, in order to cover the raw edges (it was a woven cotton and wanted to fray a bit). For the curvy pieces of letters, I had to cut teeny tiny little slits partially through the ribbon, allowing for the bends without the ribbon sticking up funny. Sometimes that meant sitting there holding the ribbon down on the curve for 3-5 minutes before carefully peeling my finger off. :)

You can see above where I had multiple ribbons going so that I could get it done quicker. The glue takes very little to stick and less time to set, so I ran several ribbons at once so I could alternate.


Finally, deliver to the birthday girl and go have some fun!

PS - E still wears her shirt to school on occasion, and it's gotten a few compliments from class moms.
PPS - I also sketched out numbers/names for a friend of mine, but I don't have pictures to share, and no permission yet to share them if I had pics! If I ever get pictures/permission, I'll share her work with you, too!