Tutorial Tuesday: {Foot and Hands} Reindeer Shirt

Cutie Face has lots of beautiful Christmas dresses but doesn't own any Christmas or Holiday shirts. That all changed yesterday!

I made a super cute shirt off of another blog tutorial--scroll to the very end to see it! For my Tutorial, though, I wanted to make a Reindeer shirt using Cutie Face's hands and feet as the template.

Side Note: I think that you can make a lot of cute Reindeer shirts using templates, etc. but it is SO NEAT to use your kiddo's hands and feet because then you can always look back on this shirt and see how small they used to be! And, if you keep the shirt for a long time, you can eventually pass it along to their children--how cool would that be for them to wear their mom or dad's hands and feet!

What you'll need:

• Your toddler's hands and feet
• Felt in brown, red and white
• Googly eyes (or buttons to make the eyes or just more felt!)
• For a girl: a bow is a MUST so ribbon for a bow
• Stitch Witchery
• Iron
• Sewing Machine (or your own hand sewing would work fine, too!)
• Glue gun for adhering the eyes
  
• T-shirt in any color

Step 1: Trace your child's hand and foot onto the felt that you want to use for the body of the reindeer. Cutie Face wouldn't stay still long enough for me to take a picture AND trace so no picture! sorry!

Step 2: Cut out two of the hands and one foot, two circles for the eyes and two hearts for the mouth. If you are making this for a boy, you might want to make circular mouths. This is what you should have:

Step 3: Figure out the placement of your hands, foot, etc. on the t-shirt:

Step 4: Use Stitch Witchery or any other fabric fuser, to fuse the elements together. Then stitch witch (is that a verb? hmmm. It is now!) the Reindeer onto the shirt. This is a MUST for me as I'm a rotten sewer!

Step 5: {OPTIONAL} Don't break your mother's sewing machine while you are visiting her. And certainly don't scare her by taking a screwdriver to it! Just document it with pictures and tell her later (or when you can't figure out how to fix it...then ask for help! THANKS MOM!):

Step 6: Applique the felt pieces together. First do the small inside pieces, then work your way out, eventually appliquing the whole Reindeer onto the shirt (as a rotten sewer, i used all my concentration to applique and forgot to take a picture after this one! but you get the point):

Step 7: Once everything is sewn in place, determine where you would like to place your googly eyes and bow (optional!)
Step 8: Glue the eyes and bow in place with a hotglue gun:

Step 9: Step back and admire your finished product!

Step 10: Put it on your kiddo and take lots of pictures of them looking goofy in their new shirt (Cutie Face actually really really loved this shirt and kept wanting to feel the eyes and bow and then look in the mirror. Success!)

Again, I just LOVE that these are her hands and footprint--I can't wait to see how much they'll grow by next year! Perhpas we'll be making this a yearly tradition!

***Updated*** My friend, Kim, came up with the genius idea to make these for several years and turn them into a quilt for the kids to snuggle up with during the Christmas season. And, my mom-in-law suggested that I turn it into a pillow and send it to her :) So the options are endless with this craft!

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I was very inspired by this adorable Christmas Tree shirt that Paige and Brooke blogged about last week. SOOO cute.

So I decided to make one for Cutie Face (BAD photo quality! sorry!:

Many many special thanks to the Twin for actually doing the sewing for me on that one! I couldn't do the straight edge...yeah...reason #101 why she has an Etsy store and I don't!

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