Landen T-Shirt Gift

My husband's cousin is turning 1. I used to be super close to his cousin's wife, but our bond ended, and we're not close anymore. So, I don't know much about her life, or her son. Anyway, them being family, and it being his first birthday, we got invited to the party. I didn't want to spend a lot of money, and I wanted to be crafty. His party invitation is similar to his baby shower with cute monkey's and they call him "monkey man." So, originally, I was going to just embroider a monkey and then heat and bond it to a shirt. Well, I was on a roll when I was out looking for stuff, and found a Garanamals shirts from Walmart for $4. The only issue was it had a pocket, and I didn't want that. Workable still, though. I was going to just find a Fat Quarter fabric and embroider the monkey, like I said, but then I found this really super cute monkey material and went with that. I took the pocket off the shirt, and got set to embroider his name onto the small rectangle of fabric. See below:












I embroidered his name, then I used heat and bond (amazing stuff) to adhere it to the shirt. I still had to stitch around the edges for re-enforcement. Unfortunately, my sewing machine I have issues with (saving for a new one!) and my stitches aren't straight, and I had to back stitch for re-enforcement so my stitch edging isn't great. Of course, doing a shirt on the machine isn't super easy, and it's not easy to hand stitch with heat and bond. So, 50-50 choice in which way to go. I went with speed. That being said, I'm no expert with the sewing machine anyway.

So, here's the shirt:











And here's a close up of just the monkey business. Like I said, it's not fabulous, but it's ok for my skill level. I may just buy some buttons and put buttons on the corners to cover up the parts I don't like, and it will give it a little more pizazz.


Oh, and I attempted the chain stitch on the embroidery, but I had only chosen 3 strands of floss, so it's not super evident. Cute enough, though. Especially since I speculate he won't wear it many times anyway. Oh well. It was a fun crafty exercise.