Go Team! onsie tutorial

While stalking perusing Pinterest the other day, I stumbled upon this and spit my Diet Coke all over the computer screen:

My first thought was "OMG this is the cutest thing ever!" My second thought was, "I NEED to make this!" and my third thought was more pouty:  "Hubby will kill me if I put his boy in this shirt."

I am in luck, though. A sweet friend had the cutest little girl not too long ago, and her big brother just happens to play football. I made up my mind on the spot: precious Ava will cheer on her big brother in style this season. Wanna know how I made her shirt? Read on.

**Before we move on, let me confess that I am new and self-taught on the sewing machine. I make mistakes and probably don't do things they way they should be done. But it works for me, and I am learning each day**

Materials:
You will need a shirt (or onsie, as in this case), fabric for the football, ribbon in your team's colors, coordinating thread, a needle, Steam a Seam (or whatever iron-on adhesive you choose) and your sewing machine. That's it.  Oh, and a football pattern. You need that, too.

Step 1: Trace your football pattern (I just Googled "football" and looked through the images until I found one I liked) onto the smooth side of the Steam a Seam. Like so:

Step 2: Cut out the football shape and iron the bumpy side to the backside of the football fabric. It is very important that you do not iron your pattern onto the pretty side. This is what it should look like.

Step 3: Cut out the fabric football. See how pretty?

Step 4: Remove the paper backing and position your football on your onsie (it should be fairly in line with the armpits of the shirt). Iron. Starting to get exciting, huh?

Step 5: Now we're ready to start sewing! I use the basic straight stitch setting. You could zig-zag, but I really like the cleanliness of a straight stitch. Here's what it looks like on my machine:

Now, position your needle. I use the notch in the presser foot as a guide. I place the notch on the edge of the football fabric. Also, start sewing in the corner of the football where you are going to put your bow. That way, if your start and stop don't line up, the bow can cover it.

Stitch all the way around the football, stopping every once in a while to lift the presser foot (while the needle's still down!) and reposition the notch on the edge of the fabric.

When you get all the way around the football, backstich. Now you have an ironed-on Hey! Arnold head. 



Let's add the white seams to the football (I just drew out the seams, ironed them on the football, and stitched -- just like I did with the football). A football! Horray!

Step 6: This is probably the trickiest part of the whole process: making a bow. I have no picture of how to tie a bow as it took me a good while and lots of head scratching to get this bow. It's a basic tie-your-shoe kind of bow. I'm sure you could come up with a better one. Anyway, I positioned it where I wanted on the shirt and hand-stitched the bow in place. See?

Once you finish attaching your bow, you're finished! Yippee! This is absolutely a naptime project as it took about an hour from start to finish (and that was with me starting and stopping frequently to take pictures, think through the process, and eat delicious freshly-baked cookies).

Now you know how to make this shirt -- go make your own before the weekend's football festivities (we're counting down the hours until Thursday night over here)!