The final shirt (and another!)

In the end I wasn't too happy with just the stencilled Union flag for El's shirt, so I made another print with a further stencil of three hearts and a crown (which I drew by hand) on top. I appliqued the final design to a white t-shirt , added some off-cuts of knit fabric as bunting around the shoulders, and she was ready to go.

I loved the look of the bunting so much, I decided to make a shirt for Kiki too, using an old white hand-me-down t-shirt that was getting a little short on her. I added a couple of ruffles at the bottom and a string of bunting made from more offcuts and some ribbon.

 

I didn't have interfacing to iron on to the back of the triangles to stop them curling up so I had to sew them in place. I think I might make more in other colour combinations as I have a lot of fabric scraps and old t-shirts to use up!

As for the wedding itself, I loved Kate's dress, and those trees in the Abbey. The girls were not terribly impressed (neither of them are really the princess type, except for princesses who fight baddies and fly on spaceships). But they did approve of the mini Victoria sponge cakes and strawberries we had at tea time. And Daddy's home made bread.

Union Jack freezer paper stencil

Hope everyone had a relaxing Easter break! This is just a fly-by post to share a freezer paper stencil for a Union Jack flag (yes I know, pedants, strictly it's just called the Union flag). I'm in the process of making El a shirt for her Royal Wedding celebration day at pre-school tomorrow and I thought I'd share this now when it might actually be of use!

Here's the finished image.

This is the first time I've attempted freezer paper stenciling and I love it! Freezer paper isn't too widely available here in the UK, but you can get it from Hobbycraft. I got mine from Ebay. There are very many tutorials out there on the technique of freezer paper stenciling - for example here and here.

For this flag you need two colours and hence two stencils - one for the red and one for the blue (for use on white fabric). I've made the two part stencil into a pdf which you can grab here:

Click here to download from mediafire
Or here on Scribd

Just print out on to freezer paper (non waxy side), cut into two halves, then cut out the black parts using a craft knife and ruler.

(The pdf should print out OK on both US and UK paper sizes; just make sure you are not scaling to fit the paper).

Iron the "blue" part onto your fabric first, then sponge on your blue fabric paint. When it's completely dry (ours dried after a couple of hours in the sunshine), remove the paper and iron on the "red" part of the stencil, using the little grey markers to line up the cross correctly with the blue parts you've already printed. Then paint on your red fabric paint.

So easy! Miss El did this part herself.

Wait again, then peel and reveal!

As you can see I was rushing and got the positioning just off slightly so that some of the thinnest stripe at the bottom right is a little messed up. But imperfections are the beauty of handmade right? :)

I used scrap fabric so I can temporarily applique it to a shirt for tomorrow, but you can apply straight to a tshirt, of course.

Off to finish the shirt now!

ETA: click to see how it turned out.