A Handful of Thanks t-shirt tutorial

I bet everyone at one time or another has made one of these handprint turkeys in school…I just applied the concept to fabric and wah lah we have a cute, festive shirt…that doesn’t break the bank!

I have also found this idea on Treasures for Tots.

Materials:

Heat n Bond Lite

4 remnant pieces of fabric (red, orange, yellow, & brown) I bought a fat quarter of each and didn’t even use ½…so if you have fabric laying around use what you have!

Orange Rick Rack (2 pieces

3” piece of red ribbon

Fabric Glue (Liquid Stitch)

2 Googly eyes

Fray Check

T-shirt of your choice (I used what I had since it’s only going to be work 1-2 times)

Directions:  *I prewashed the fabric and shirt before starting*

1.   Trace your child’s hand onto a piece of scrap paper & cut it out- this is your stencil.

2.   Roughly trace your child’s foot rounding out the toe area to look like the turkey’s body (or if you have an uncooperative toddler like I do trace one of their shoes) cut this out as well.

3.   Trace your hand stencil 6 times and foot stencil once on the Heat n Bond. 

4.   Roughly cut out all your pieces (you don’t have to cut on the lines)

5.   Cut out a little triangle piece from the Heat n Bond for the turkey’s beak

6.   Not it’s time to get out your iron.

a.   Iron the turkey’s body (foot piece) to the back of the brown fabric

b.   Iron 2 feathers (hand prints) to the backs of each of the yellow, red, and orange fabric (you’ll have 2 feathers in each color)

c.   Iron the beak piece to back of the the yellow or orange fabric… you decide what you like

7.   Cut out the pieces (on the lines this time!)

8.   Now take your 3” piece of red ribbon and glue it into the waddle shape (put it aside and let it dry)

9.   Now take the backings off the feather pieces and arrange them first on the shirt.  Once you have them how you want them just iron them down.  To make sure I got my turkey centered I folded my shirt in half and ironed a crease down the middle then lined the hands along both sides of that line.

10. Now glue the rick rack pieces to your shirt at the bottom of the feathers (before gluing place the body on top and make sure you like where the legs are placed. 

11.    Once legs are dry, iron down the body.

12.    Glue on the waddle and googly eyes and iron the beak on top of the waddle.

You’re done!  Step back and admire your work… once my model wakes up I’ll try and get a picture with him wearing it! ( He wasn't happy to be my model)

I think I might go back and do some rough machine stitching around the body and feathers just so it doesn't completely come apart when I wash it.