Floral Love Tee

Alternate title: I'm Booking a Cruise With the Money I Saved on This One.

I'm normally not a huge fan of clothes with words on them (unless they're huge and pink and splayed across my behind, of course), but this top is an exception. It just doesn't have that "look, my shirt is speaking for me" vibe that I usually get from graphic-type tees, and it won me over with the cute floral print:

 

Floral love tee @ Delia's

Isn't that cool? I really like the mix of rough and sweet. And I know, I know, you're thinking, "Another Delia's knockoff? Seriously?" But hey, if they're going to keep sending me catalogs, I'm going to keep knocking off their clothes. I need something to flip through while I eat my Cap'n Crunch in the morning.

The original shirt isn't even very expensive--$19.50--but my frugality knows no bounds. And part of me refuses to pay for something I could make myself purely on principle. Sure, I could have bought that shirt from Delia's . . . but to know that I could so easily make it for under $5? Buying it with that knowledge would kind of be a slap in the crafty face. So I made it.

Like it? It cost me $3. And that $16.50 I saved is really going to make a dent in our student debt, let me tell you. When we finish repaying those loans precisely 1 hour ahead of when we otherwise would have, thanks to that $16.50 I saved, I'm going to buy myself some ice cream.

I think you should make one, don't you agree? And although step-by-step instructions probably aren't necessary for this one (you could pretty much look at the picture and know what I did), I made them anyway. What can I say, I guess I like to hear myself talk (or type?). Click read more and get to work!

What you'll need:

- a tank or tee (I bought mine off the clearance rack at Walmart for $2, and if you shop at my Walmart, I apologize . . . I bought all of them. Expect many more plain tee refashions in the near future.)

- some floral fabric (I used another Walmart clearance top that was on sale for $1)

- Heat n Bond, or another fusible web

My shirt had some pretty funky sleeves that needed fixing:

Weird, right? Still worth my $2, but weird. I just laid another top with normal sleeves on top of it and pinned it where I wanted the seam to be, and sewed it up.

I used this $1 Walmart clearance top for my floral fabric letters:

(Just a tip--keep your eye out for fabric in unexpected places! At the thrift store or in bargain bins or clearance sections, just buy the biggest size you can in prints that you like, and you've got some great, cheap fabric to work with! I really love the little floral print on this top, and I only used 1 sleeve of it for this shirt--I have so much more cute bargain fabric to play with!)

I removed one sleeve, cut off the cuff, and cut along the seam to open it into a big flat panel of fabric for my letters. Apply your Heat n Bond to the wrong side of the fabric.

I wrote out my letters by hand on cardstock to use as a template before I cut into my fabric--remember that all your letters need to be drawn backwards on the Heat n Bond so you can flip them over and iron them right side up on your shirt! So cut large letters from cardstock and put them on the paper side of the Heat n Bond  backwards, then trace around them and cut out your shapes.

Remove the paper backing from the fabric, lay them down how you want them on your top, and iron them on securely.

Now stitch around the edges of the letters--I used black thread because I liked the idea of really visible stitching--and put 'er on!

Maybe if you ask real nice I'll post the matching sweatpants I whipped up--they say "hottie" on the butt. With glitter!

Linking up here and here!