Pumpkin Shirts

Yesterday morning, the girls and I met friends to play. While the kiddos were swarming over the play equipment, my friend said, "Oh, look at that girl's cute appliqued pumpkin shirt." Little did she know that she sparked some kind of dormant pumpkin mania deep within me, which caused me to stop at the fabric store on the way home and crank out knock-off pumpkin shirts before supper.

I started with white shirts from the thrift store. This is why the shirts are so different from each other. They are also not ideal for a pattern (turtleneck and a pocket), but that's what I found, and they cost me a grand total of $1.30. So...two white shirts.

Next, I found some pumpkin clip art, which I enlarged for the baby shirt and enlarged some more for the toddler shirt. I transferred the outline to fusible web...

...which I attached to orange polka dot fabric. I also drew some stems freehand and cut those from some brown polka dot fabric.

So here are all my pieces, including some extra-large green rickrack for the vines. (Hannah got a real kick when she learned we were buying something called "rickrack." That was funny enough to keep her entertained while we were waiting at the cutting counter.)

I fused the fabric to the shirts, then stitched over the edges. In retrospect, there should have been some stabilizer under these, but good enough is good enough.

For the finishing touch, I added some buttons from my stash.

And voila...here are some cute pumpkin shirts for my little pumpkins to wear. (Too bad I didn't get obsessed with these before we went to the pumpkin patch, huh? That would have been super cute.)