Jungle Shirts

Lauren's friend Melanie is taking her kids to New York for a birthday trip. Jordan apparently wanted a jungle themed party and Melanie decided to take the kids for a big adventure. So Lauren thought having some jungle themed shirts that they could wear would be fun.

My biggest problem with embroidery is the thought process. With garment sewing, I can go into a fabric store with a vision. I may change my mind once I see the fabrics available but I'm more confident with my choices. I have the toughest time with embroidery trying to pick out the perfect design, the perfect threads, the perfect font and the perfect fabrics for the applique. It can take me over two hours getting the design ready and I haven't even taken the garment to the machine yet. This jungle theme was no different. Did I want the designs to match? Did I want applique or a fill stitch? What size design. What an affair.

For Mikayla, I ended up with a design from Applique Corner. I thought I had some giraffe print fabric and found none. So I used this golden yellow polka dot. . Then I for the life of me find a ruffle that would work for the mane. I came across the bag of trims that I bought in NYC this summer. I held up the pink stretchy loops and said "go for it". As usual, by the time I get finished with something it's night time that is the only time I can take pictures since I don't have time in the morning in addition getting ready for work. Hence, the blurry pictures. This design was a tad more of a challenge. For one, it took a while to get it lined up on the shoulder. It still wasn't quite where I wanted it but hey, it could always be worse! The one thing I didn't like about the design is the size difference between the head and the body. I felt the body should have been bigger.  The second challenge was getting that trim to stay clear of the needle without getting my fingers in the way of the needle. I'm ok with most of the trim except for the tail. That is a little messy but I just was not going to rip it out.

For Jordan, I decided not to do applique but a fill design. I had several monkey designs from Embroidery Library and this design was my final choice.The t-shirt is still a little wet from spritzing the shirt to remove the purple marker that I use to line the design up.