Project Quilting 15.5 - Wearable

Every once in awhile, I come across a project that really grabs my imagination. It's all I think about; I want to drop everything and make it.  That happened a couple weeks ago when I opened an email newsletter from Melissa Mortenson of Polka Dot Chair.  She showed a tote bag that she made for her latest family trip to Disney World.   She cut some fabric scraps into  Mickey Mouse silhouettes and appliqued them on a purchased tote bag. See the post here: https://www.polkadotchair.com/diy-applique-disney-tote-bag/

It was so stinkin' cute that I immediately started planning to make one (or two....). The problem is that I have way too many tote bags and I really can't justify making any more.  So I started thinking about other ways to use the Mickey silhouettes.  I decided that they would look really cute on a t-shirt.  And I could wear it on MY next trip to Disney!  

But even though I kept thinking about it, I didn't have time to actually start working on it.  I sing with a local concert chorale, and last week was concert week.  We had two dress rehearsals and two concerts in the span of 6 days.  I was so busy that I even forgot that Project Quilting 15.5 was starting on Sunday! 

On Sunday evening, after I got home from the Sunday afternoon concert, I did some unwinding by checking my email and Facebook.  That's when I saw the topic for this week's challenge. 

Wearable?  WOW!  Talk about a coincidence!  And I even had a plain white T shirt that I had purchased awhile ago that I could embellish!

So Monday morning, I went spelunking into my scrap bin to find some fabrics that would be suitable for the Mickey Mouse appliques.  I was originally looking for patriotic fabrics, but on my way there, I found several strips of Ombre Confetti Metallic by V and Co.  Where and when I got them, I have no idea, since I know that I never had that jelly roll.

Sometimes I think that there is a fabric fairly, similar to the Tooth Fairy. But instead of taking a tooth and leaving a coin, she takes some of your fabric and leaves someone else's in its place. That would explain why you just know that you have a certain piece of fabric, but you can't find it.  The Fabric Fairy 'rearranges' it for us!

Anyway, one of the strips was an indigo ombre that I decided was perfect for this project.  I printed out the shape, traced it onto some template plastic, then used that to draw Mickeys onto the paper side of some fusible web.  Since the Mickeys are symmetrical, I didn't have to worry about orientation, like I would for letters.  The only thing that I needed to remember is to iron the fusible shapes onto the WRONG side of the fabric!  Yes, I have absolutely fused to to the right side before!  Once they were cool, I cut them out with a pair of very sharp scissors.

I carefully arranged the Mickeys in a 9x9 grid and fused them down. I used the blanket stitch on my Bernina B590 to stitch around the edges, using a different coordinating thread for each progressively darker row.

The one thing that I learned is that you have to be very careful not to stretch the t shirt when you are stitching around the shapes.  The easiest way to do that is to only hold onto the woven fabric shapes when you are stitching, not the surrounding t shirt.  I am happy with the way that my new Disney T shirt turned out!