“Spring Showers” Applique Tee

After my eldest daughter noticed the applique rainbow t-shirt in Issue 12 Love Sewing magazine last month, she immediately wanted one. I was glad because I wanted to make one anyway! What a cute design.

And I’m really happy with how it turned out. Luckily so is my little model!

[By the way, from now on l will call my eldest daughter ‘S’, and my youngest ‘A’ since they are their first initials.]

So S, bless her, was looking at the photo in the magazine and said something along the lines of: “but I haven’t got a plain top. Oh well you can make the top as well.” She’s a sweetie. But I found this plain white one in Mothercare for only £2 so I didn’t have to bother. I had all the colourful fabrics in my scrap bag! 🙂

I thought it’d be a bit of a faff cutting all the templates, bondaweb and fabric pieces out but I actually did most of it sat in the garden in the sunshine so I rather enjoyed it! The pieces are all individually bondawebbed and then sewn onto the t-shirt. I know I’ve said it before but I have to say it again – I absolutely love bondaweb. I don’t know how the t-shirt would have turned out if I didn’t use it! It holds everything in place, making it sooo easy to sew.

Having said that, the cloud wasn’t sooo easy. It’s – obviously – very bumpy so a lot of twisting and turning was needed. I went around it twice in the end to make it look more like it’s meant to be a bit scruffy – haha!

The little raindrops were also pretty fiddly. After doing the first one I considered free motion sewing the rest on so that I wouldn’t have to turn the t-shirt round so much. But after doing another I just continued on as I began as I figured I’d done everything else the ‘normal’ way.

I’m not too happy with the fraying of the sun; I’m hoping it doesn’t get too bad in the wash. And it will be washed a lot! The raindrops aren’t fraying yet, but I hope they survive too.

But other than that, I’m quite in love with it. Thank you to Love Sewing magazine for the design!

I’m actually in the process of debating with myself whether or not to renew my subscription with the magazine. It does have some good ideas and projects but at the same time there’s an awful lot that I know I won’t do – including a lot of the “free” patterns. I also still find a lot of mistakes in it – from grammar and spelling down to quite terrible misprinting, etc. All that annoys me. But I know if I don’t renew the subscription then the future issues will be fantastic!! Arghh what to do?!

Anyway, I hope you’re having a good week and the sunshine part of this t-shirt is out rather than the raindrops!

Beth x