Today begins the first challenge for the Michaels Makers Bloggers. I am very honored to be one of the 30 bloggers to participate. You can see all the other bloggers participating here. Throughout the year, Michaels will send a monthly challenge our way and we get to put our own spin on it. This month we got to pick a project that they have listed online, order our supplies for it (yes, Michaels has online shopping now!), and make it our own.

I chose to make a project based on the Heart Lace T-Shirt. To get my supplies, I ordered all the products, c/o Michaels, listed with the project except the shirt because I needed to order a child’s size. It was easy to navigate and find the kid shirts though. I went with a dark color to help the white lace pop.

My supplies came in the mail fast and I got to work on this shirt. I first printed out the letters I needed. I wanted to use a chunky font, so I used the “Impact” font that is found in Word. I did some measuring and determined that I wanted the letters to be four inches tall. This would allow for three rows of letters to fit on this shirt. I chose a nine letter word (celebrate) to make an even three rows. I figured this would be a fun birthday shirt since her birthday is soon. The font size ended up having to be size 420 to get it that big. Once I printed out the letters, I traced them on the iron on adhesive. Since I didn’t mirror the letters, I made sure I traced on the adhesive of the paper. Otherwise they would be backwards. I retraced over a few on the paper side for the picture above. The best thing would be to mirror your letters before printing so you trace on the paper side, but I wasn’t on a computer that had a program to do this. I then ironed on the letters to the lace. It adheres very quickly, do just follow the directions and press the iron down for 2 seconds at a time. Since the lace has holes, the adhesive can stick to what you are ironing on. So pick it up quickly after it has adhered. Next, I cut out all the letters and peeled off the paper backing.

I folded the shirt in half and ironed it to help with the letter placement. I started with the middle top row letter. Then did the next two rows middle letters. It made it easier to line up the rest after that. Again, when ironing on though, do it quickly so it doesn’t stick to your iron.

It was a really quick project and would be an inexpensive one to do, especially as a group (like for camp or something). Here are a few other positive nine letter words that could be used: Fabulous, Fantastic, Beautiful, Brilliant, and Wonderful. I haven’t washed it yet, but I have used this brand of iron on adhesive before without any issues. If you think it needs some extra holding strength, you could always do a small zig zag or a straight line stitch around the letters edges. What would you make your own from their online projects offered?

-jess

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