Mommy’s Little Monster

I made a new onesie for my little man. It was a monster, of course.

I started out the same way I start all my onesies: with a sketch.  I usually do a web image search of the type of thing I want, then pick out different elements that I like and make them into a new, original design.

Usually, I’ve just cut up my design to make it into a stencil and use it to cut out the fabric pieces. This time I decided to make something more permanent. My sister told me that she uses really heavy vellum to make a stencil.  I had a few sheets on hand, so I thought I’d try it out.

I traced each section that I wanted to make into different fabrics.

Then I cut them out.

Hee hee.  I then cut out all the fabric pieces from fabric I had already applied Heat’n Bond to.

I had originally planned to put the monster on a blue onesie, but when I laid it out I felt it was too busy.

See how the monster sort of gets lost here?

So I decided to go with white instead. It was much easier to focus on the monster.

I bonded the smaller pieces to the large one first and stitched them down with a blanket stitch. I do this so I don’t have to stitch through more layers than I need to.  It works this way if you don’t peel off the paper on the larger piece after applying Heat’n Bond until after you’ve ironed on the smaller pieces.  Otherwise you’ll end up with it all bonded to your ironing board. But maybe that’s what you’re going for.

Then I ironed this onto the onesie and stitched around all the edges.

Here’s the finished product!

I love using lots of different patterns of fabric.  I don’t use hardly any plain fabrics. And it’s surprising how little pieces of fabric can look nothing like the overall pattern. I don’t let the patterns stand it my way– even though I made this for a boy, I used two floral prints.  The eye is made from a flower.

So is the mouth.

Being selective in exactly where you cut your pieces from in the fabric pattern can really make a difference. For example, I made sure to cut the black part of the eye from a place in the fabric with a very prominent white spot so I could make it look a bit like reflected light.

My little man seems to enjoy it!