Kitty Applique

Miss Kaia announced that she really wanted a kitty shirt. Well, she didn't have a kitty shirt, which actually kind of surprised me, (we have four cats!) however, she did have a plain white shirt. So I foolishly informed her that in the morning I would have a kitty shirt for her. After finally getting her baby sister in bed around 1am I stayed up wwaaaayyyy too late to fabricate a kitty shirt. I haven't really made an applique before, so this was especially foolish, but I did have some fusible webbing, so I set to. It was amazingly easy, and I am very nearly entirely incompetent when it comes to sewing.

I sketched out a kitty shape on the papery side of a piece of freezer paper, then I cut out the approximate shape in fabric and stuck that to my fusible webbing. (It had a sticky side, it was awesome!)

I then cut the fusible webbing to match. Now, the thing about freezer paper is, you can iron it to fabric and then peel it off, no harm done. It's fantastic. So with a quick swipe of the iron, my drawing was firmly in place and easy to cut around.

I positioned kitty where I wanted it on her shirt and covered it with paper towel for safety, then ironed it on the front. I flipped it in-side-out and ironed its back, too.

Next I cut eyes from green felt, and a nose from some thin, shimmery pink scrap fabric. I cut fusible webbing for those as well, and ironed them in place. After that I stitched around them. The pink fabric did not like this very much but I think it turned out okay. Stitching it on is not really necessary, but should help it last longer and I do like it better visually.

I stitched around the kitty, as well, with pink thread to match its spots. You should probably use a machine for this because it would take a lot less time, but I am terribly intimidated by my sewing machine so I hand stitched it. For pupils, I doubled my black thread over and stitched repeatedly. A couple of the stitches I ended in the center of the eye and used them to tack some of the threads out a bit, so that I got an ellipse shape. I added whiskers by tripling my pink thread up, knotting in the back, and then knotting it in the front to keep them from slipping out. 

I tacked on a little ribbon flower by one ear to complete it. I already had the flower, but they would be very easy to make, too. She was so happy to get her kitty shirt in the morning! It was worth staying up :) Upon being shown, she immediately ripped her jammies off and then actually wore it overnight and the next day as well because I could not peel it off of her.... /hide