Friday, January 21, 2011

Tree Hugger onesie!

I had an idea to make a coworker a gift for his impending little girl, well she came here about month early, so I was in a rush to finish it quickly before it was too late. My coworker is the biggest tree hugger (self-proclaimed) I know, I mean the man is a vegetarian & eats from fabric sandwich bags (which I think is awesome). Since I always try to make my gifts a little more personalized, I wanted to incorporate his love for mother earth.
Since I have plain white onesies leftover from my 3-pack of Carter long sleeve onesies purchased at target for my last project.
I was inspired by this picture of a barrette I came across when I Googled "tree hugger":

So I went to the craft store and purchased and also rummaged around the house for thing I had:
1- sheet of brown felt
1- sheet of dark green felt
Green fabric paint (something that will contrast against the green felt)
Brown fabric paint
Green embroidery floss/thread (something that will contrast against the green felt)
Brown embroidery floss/thread
Lightweight Fusible Interfacing (to protect baby's sensitive skin)
Freezer Paper (my new favorite media, it's paper on one side & wax on the other, it can be ironed to create screen printing templates among other things, the only place other than the internet that I can find it where I live is at the supermarket where the aluminum foil & sandwich bags are)

First I organically cut a tree out of the felt, perhaps if I do this again I'll make templates & take more picture (sorry).
Next I went on the computer and messed around on word processing program (i.e. Word) to figure out what style font I liked.  If you have a ink-jet printer you can print out the text/design straight on to the paper-side of the freezer paper but if you have a laser printer like me, you'll gonna need to print out on regular paper (since the heat from the laser printer would clog up your rollers and create a gummy mess) and then trace it on to the freezer paper.
I then used "Exacto" knife (razor blade) to cut out the letters out of the freezer paper, I can't rationalize buying one of those Cricut (personal cutting machine) yet... maybe if I start a business or something.
I then dabbed on the paint on to the felt waited for it to dry (about 2-3 hours), then peeled off the freezer paper.
But I felt it still needed definition, so I used the green embroidery thread to spruce it up the lettering and attach it on the onesie. I gave it some more personalization, using the freezer paper & brown again to include the mom's, dad's & baby's first initial in the heart.
I really love the way it turned out!!

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