the dandelion tee tutorial

I love dandelions! Technically weeds, ok, but I think they're really pretty. This tee has been floating around in my head for a couple of weeks, inspired by all the dandelion bouquets my little chickies have been gathering lately. It's an easy-breezy tee, meant for gardening, picnics, and cloud watching.

All you need are a few small supplies (you probably have some of them hanging around already) and about an hour.

If you have a shirt you want to use that fits well, great. Otherwise, you'll need to dig up that perfect-fitting white shirt of yours that's in the bottom of your laundry basket and is getting embarrassingly grungy because you're too cheap to buy a new one, so you wear it twice between washes and just about every day.

What?

Oh. So, take your men's undershirt and fold it in half. Fold your grungy white shirt in half and lay it on top of the men's shirt, matching the shoulder seams of both shirts. Cut the men's shirt about 1/4 inch bigger all the way around than your grungy white shirt.

Go wash your grungy shirt. Then sew up the sides of the men's shirt, right sides together. If you have a serger, you can finish the neck/sleeves/hem. Or not.

Cut a few small squares of your yellow fabrics and fuse them to a piece (mine is 7x12 inches) of Wonder-Under (man I love that stuff). You'll also need to fuse a long, skinny green fabric scrap to make the dandelion stem.

Cut the Wonder-Undered fabrics into wonky rectangles of varying lengths and widths. Mine were between 1-3 inches long and 0.5-1.5 inches wide. Go fuse yourself to the TV while you peel off the paper backings (I watched Prince Caspian. Kinda fun. I love the part where they storm the castle and one of the guards wigs out when he figures out how to turn on Edmund's flashlight.)

Arrange all the pieces into a design that suits your fancy and iron thoroughly.

Now for my favorite part! Head to the sewing machine and doodle away. Don't get all persnickety, just make squiggly lines and screw up and miss a few spots and then go back for more.

Done! Now go take a picture to share with us (and if you find a way to take a cute picture of yourself, call me).

Thanks for reading/sewing along!