Nattily dressed and no where to go...

Yeah for my first tutorial! How adorable is this?

This project is all over craft blogs, so I'm sorry I can't give credit to the brilliant crafter/blogger who first posted this... and because I didn't follow any ONE blog to figure this out... here's my version. Both my initial, miserable fail and my second, more successful attempt.

Supplies:

• Shirt (in my case a onesie)
• Fabric (in my case, old boxers)
• paper and pencil
• iron on interfacing
• iron
• sewing supplies (machine, thread, the usual suspects)

I selected a plain white onesie and a fabric that I thought had a nice "tie like" print. Then I drew a tie on a piece of paper and folded in in half lengthwise so that it would be symetrical. (I love this trick -- otherwise everything I do would look totally off.)

(You can see here that I cut the "knot" off because, at first, I thought I'd applique it separate from the "tail" of the tie. My plan was to rotate the knot slightly so the pattern would go in a different direction, making it look more like a real tie. But the patten was so small and regular, it wouldn't have made a difference.)

Then I folded the fabric and the paper and lined up the folded edges. I traced the tie with disappearing ink. This picture shows it after I cut it out (hey, I'm new at this), but I think you'll get the idea.

Next everything was wrinkly, so I ironed it all...

And pinned the tie on in key spots to prevent it sliding every which way while I sewed. Now, this is where I went wrong: I sewed all the way around and it came out like this... puffy because the shirt fabric stretched when the tie fabric didn't....

So... I started over. Folding, tracing, cutting, ironing... then (and here's the most important part) I used this interfacing:

I laid my tie on the interfacing and ironed... BIG mistake... I shouldn't have cut the tie out BEFORE ironing it to the interfacing (um, yeah. The directions on the interfacing bag are pretty clear about that. Have I mentioned I'm bad at directions?) Anyway, no major harm done. Just interfacing glue on my iron.. oh, and melted interfacing bag plastic on my iron because I mini-panicked and put my iron on the bag... But I digress...

Sewing this time was sooo much easier because the fabric stayed in place and there's no need to pin. I used a zig zig stich and white thread because I thought I'd like the look of it. (If I do it again -- that would be a THIRD time for those of you counting --I would try a color that's closer to the tie.)

I'm proud of my finished product and will try to get a few pics of Ben Ben modeling it in the a.m.