Making HTV Shirts with the Grands - Part II

Making HTV-vinyl shirts with the girls wasn't nearly as straightforward as it was with B.  Naturally, the girls wanted shirts, but they had chosen to make rompers instead of shorts, so they had nothing to pair it with.   

A and I spent quite a long time perusing the Silhouette Design Store before she decided she wanted a Disney-esque design (she is currently writing a book about Disney!). She chose this castle design.  We didn't have an appropriate-color shirt her size, so it involved a trip to Joann's.  I wish I had thought to buy glitter HTV, but I think I was a little afraid of it (and with good reason, it turns out - HINT:  Be sure to test cut first and change the settings as necessary.  The settings in the machine didn't adequately cut the vinyl, and I had to play with them some to get it to play nicely.)

When we got home, I worked to size it for a shirt her size - as you can see in the photo above it was sized for a full 12x12 cut - way too big for a shirt for a 10-year old.

I tested the design first on a scrap of vinyl, and E requested that I make it into a shirt for her Willa (Wellie Wishers American Girl) doll.  That actually made making E's shirt much easier later.

And naturally, I had to make Mary Ellen (A's American Girl Doll) a matching shirt as well.

Cutting the vinyl wasn't really a problem for the castle, but I forgot to reverse the image for the word MAGIC so naturally I had to do that twice.  Since I didn't have glitter vinyl, we used the same layering technique we used for B's paw prints for a more pronounced look.  As you can see, I'm no expert in sizing complex designs. 

Photo credit:  Cherri Woodruff

Luckily, A was happy with it just the way it was.

Going with the Disney theme, E had chosen Cinderella's Coach as her image.  This looks so cool, doesn't it?

But here's the image you see on the Silhouette.  Each of these is a different color vinyl, which is fine, but resizing all of these disparate parts and getting them to match up is beyond my skills.  I really need expert instruction if I'm ever going to manage this!  (I really wish I could get some in-person instruction on my Silhouette.  Melissa at Silhouette School provides great tutorials - I couldn't have gotten this far without her! -  but to do a project like this, I would need someone holding my hand in person.)  I tried it nevertheless and wasted almost a whole roll of vinyl in the process.

Since the design she chose was impossible (at least for me) I decided to make E's shirt match the doll's shirt.  And because the grands had to go home before I got E's shirt made, I had some time to get some glitter vinyl cut (which was amazingly hard to find due to the manufacturing/transportation issues because of Covid apparently).   

By the time I realized that the pumpkin coach was not going to happen, understood  that a test-cut was needed for glitter vinyl even though I used the suggested settings, and wasted almost a whole roll of glitter vinyl on a pumpkin coach that was too big anyway, I was so frazzled from all the failed attempts that again I forgot to reverse the word "magic" before I cut, so yet more glitter vinyl was wasted.  Hopefully this is a lesson I will remember next time.

In the end, the girls were thrilled with their shirts - and so were the dollies, I hope. 

The Other Christmas Gift

I wanted to share the other crafty Christmas gift I created this year.  BD#2 selected this verse last spring when she and her husband moved into their new apartment.  Sadly, in the craziness which was prevalent here before Christmas as I was doing the finishing and wrapping and packing, I didn't get a really good photo.

My friend Bonnie loaned me her Cricut (3 times) and then finally came over and helped me cut the letters.  It was so much easier to do with someone who knew what she was doing.  We used just the fonts she already had, which might not necessarily have been the ones I would have chosen if I had had unlimited choices, but they really turned out fine in the end.

I was having a terrible time getting the letters straight, and I didn't want to draw lines and then figure out how to get rid of them, so Krista saved the day when she suggested painter's tape.  Now why didn't I think of that!  Perfect.  It worked wonderfully well.  And my 24-inch sewing ruler came in quite handy too.

13 coats of Mod Podge and the project was finished.  The Mod Podge filled in all the roughness and left it smooth to the touch with a matte finish.

And best of all, BD#2 seemed to really like her poster.

I love it when that happens.

And WH got me a Silhouette cutting machine for Christmas.  On to the next project - as soon as I figure out how to use it.

Happy crafting!