Sunday 6 July 2014

Tutorial: Frozen-inspired tops

"Let it go, let it go, can't hold it back anymore".....  Yep, like everyone with little girls (and boys too I'm told) our house was overun by the recent Frozen movie frenzy.  I actually really like the movie (at least I did like it the first 35 times I watched it!), and it was a lovely excuse in the Christmas school holidays to have a girly date with my two little munchkins, and for Hannah to experience her first trip to the movies.  We had a lovely date ... got dolled up in dresses, caught a mid-morning movie, then had a lovely girly sushi-train lunch.  Too much fun!

Then came the waiting ... you know, the waiting for the movie to come out on DVD.  We were given the soundtrack so we had the songs firmly under our belt, and Bethany requested a frozen-themed birthday in March, so I came up with a very basic frozen-themed cake for her.
Then we watched as the merchandise came into the stores.  Personally, I've never really been a fan of licenced clothing, so I've managed to avoid any of the Frozen licenced clothing so far.  But having said that, with girls that are such huge fans of this movie, it is exciting for them to wear something associated with their movie-crush.  So I thought I'd have a go at making them some frozen-inspired embellished T-shirts ... you know, frozen-ish, obvious enough for the girls to be excited by them, but not too obvious for Mummy.  And here's What Mummy's Been Up To ...  
The first one I made was Hannah's.  I had this white shop-bought cotton doily left over from another project, and I thought it was totally snow-flake-esque.  
So here's what I did:

I grabbed a store-bought T-shirt in this lovely blue-green-aqua, my cotton doily, some clear and sparkly beads (which I secretly snatched from Bethany's beading kit ... seriously, she'll never miss them!) ... 
... and a cute sparkly button like this ...


Then I carefully laid the doily in the centre of the T-shirt, and pinned it around the edge.  I used lots of pins, one on each point and mid-point to make sure it stayed still while sewing.  I could have used some iron-on adhesive, but didn't want this to show through from behind the doily.
I then set my machine to a small zig-zag, and carefully and very slowly stitched around the edge of the snowflake, attaching it to the front of the shirt.
I then placed the beads between each of the points of the snowflake, and hand-sewed them in place, carefully knotting the threads at the back to ensure they are tightly attached.  I also sewed the sparkly button to the centre.
And the result ... Hannah loves her Frozen Shirt, even if she was a little hesitant to let Daddy snap a good picture at our recent weekend away at the beach ... and I really like the effect of it.  
And so, to be the nice, fair Mummy that I am try to be, I just had to make Bethany a frozen shirt too.  And in my classic matching-but-not way, I decided I'd do hers a little different.

For Bethany's I decided to go with a smaller snowflake embellishment.  I still used the same store-bought T-shirt, and the same sparkly button for the centre, but I used some 8-ply cotton, and a 4mm crochet hook and made the little snowflake.  I used this pattern, available free online.  
Once crocheted, I used a hot steam iron to set it and flatten it a little more, before attaching it to the shirt in the same way as I did for Hannah's shirt, and hand sewed on the sparkly button.
And Bethany's pretty chuffed with her shirt too!
So, I call that a win-win, huh!  Cute frozen-themed blue, white snow-flakey and sparkly tops for the girls which are totally original, as well as being a fun and quick project for Mummy, and 2 happy munchkins! 
Now, I'm off to enjoy flicking through some more of Daddy's amazing beach snaps.  Sunset at the beach really is the golden hour for photo lighting, huh.  We were at the beach for 3 nights, and had lovely beach-plays each evening in this amazing lighting.  You'd never guess it's the middle of winter!!

6 comments :

  1. I'm not a big fan of licenced clothing either. I much prefer the cute t-shirts you've come up with, Wen. Adding sparkle to the doilies is such a great idea.

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  2. they are very sweet ...having 3 sons though don't think it would be there thing...actually it definitely isn't there thing...

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    1. Ha ha ... yeah maybe not one for the boys Sherrie! Thanks for reading anyway!

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