Another Year of T-shirts for the Grandchildren

It has become a Rite of Spring for me, this making of t-shirts for our grandchildren. Lovingly fingering the thin cotton material while dressed in wool always lifts my spirits knowing that the weather will one day be warm enough for the children to wear them.

 

This year I decided to design my own t-shirts instead of buying already designed iron-on transfers at the craft store. That way each child will have something that fits his or her personality and interests, or at least that is the goal.  :)

 

 

 T-shirt #1

 

I only have 2 completed so far, but thought I would share them.  You can probably guess who is now the owner of the first shirt. (If you need a reminder you can go back a few years to my 4th blog post here to meet the manatee lover.)

 

I've tried unsuccessfully for a long time to find a cross stitch pattern to make a manatee sweatshirt for the manatee lover's autumn birthday but with no success. So when I decided to make her a t-shirt I looked through my pictures to see if I had anything appropriate. None were perfect, but one was chosen because it had at least one complete manatee in it:



 

 

 

 

 

After copying my photo to a Word document I added text and a graphic to the page: 

 

 

 

Using iron-on transfer paper (which I bought as a BOGOF per package sale offer) I printed off the transfer. If you do this, remember to use the mirror-image setting so that the text is properly formatted after ironing.

 

Tigger is now wearing this t-shirt:

 



T-shirt #2

Thanks to current tv options Fen has discovered old cartoons that most of us forgot (and for good reason, I might add). One of the characters has become his hero. Thanks also to old pictures found on the Internet I downloaded a picture of his favorite character:

T-shirts #3-#7

Uh, not even started although Sweet Pea did tell me that she would like one with her favorite animal, a hippo, . . . or a dog . . . specifically, Pepper.

Ok, perhaps you'd like to see pictures of our two latest cuties wearing the Valentine shirts that their Gram bought them instead. (I use the word "bought" loosely. I used bonus points earned from holiday spending to get each shirt for about $1.50 each. Hope that doesn't make me look like Gram-the-Scrooge).

Fen was giving his sister a little Valentine love.  :)

The picture is a little fuzzy but these moving targets were hard to photograph

And here is our newest little love and his Gram, who was privileged to visit him  on Valentine's Day in his home almost 2,000 miles away from her own (which is in an area warmer than her own year round):

I'll post more on shirts 3-7 when I have them.