Patterns for Pirates Tulip Tee (kids) - Mia Lego Friends style

The P4P Tiny Tulip is a free pattern available here. I have used it three times now, the first as a 'proper' tulip style long sleeve t-shirt, the second using fleece to make a jumper, and finally this one, a normal t-shirt to be in the style of Mia from Lego Friends ready for when we are going to LegoLand for the weekend. This pattern is easy to follow, and is just three pieces if you do the standard t-shirt front, back and neckline. I will post another time about constructing the top in the Tulip style. 

The level of stretch is important if you don't want the neckline to be odd. I've tried the neckline twice, and it stands up a little as the material didn't have quite the right amount of stretch. I bought half a meter of thickish t-shirt material for age 7, which makes two t-shirts, as long as you don't mind a different colour neckline, otherwise I would recommend another 10cm. I was lucky that my daughter wanted a different coloured neckline 🙂.

I used my overlocker to put the t-shirt together, and used the Brother Coverstitch CV3550 for the hem, sleeves and to hold down the seam at the neckline. It's my second go with the Coverstitch, and my first with thin t-shirt material. For some reason there was a problem with the settings, so it skipped stitches ☹️, although it did look great at the hem I was wonky as at the neckline - even with the clear foot. I definitely need to practice.

Applique

This is where I lost my mind trying to get the shirt to (sort of) match the pictures online of Mia. This is the picture I used for inspiration.

Mia

I made loads of butterflies before I got to some that looked ok enough to go on the t-shirt. My daughter was happy with the first ones I made, my other half was a bit more brutal.

In the end it was Vliesline that saved my sanity. So after a lot of trial and error the steps I did for successful butterflies were:

• Hand draw the largest butterfly pieces (those in the light pink) on paper (only half the drawing as folded to cut out evenly). 
• Hand draw the paw print on paper
  NB - at this point as I was using t-shirt material using thick cardboard might have made my life easier to retrace from paper.
• Cut out the paper templates.
• Butterflies: Trace onto the pale pink, away from the edges, as the closer to the edge the less neat the stitching looked.
• Paw print: Trace onto the dark pink, away from the edges.
• Set the sewing machine to 3.0/0.6 on the zigzag stitch, set speed to medium (I used slow in places) so that you can manage the turns.
• Stitch on the lines drawn on the pink.
• You can now cut around the stitching
• trace the same pattern again on to the inner pieces - this time you will need to draw inside the original template by approx 0.5cms. This helps plan a nice, consistent, space around the edges. 
• Cut out the inner pieces.
• Use the Vliesline to attach the inner pieces to the outer pieces (so attach dark pink butterfly to centre of light pink butterfly, light paw centre to outer dark pink paw print.
• Use the same settings as above to stitch around the inner pieces.
• Use Vliesline on the back of all the pieces to stick to the t-shirt
• I then hand stitched the pieces to the t-shirt so the pieces felt more stuck on as I wasn't sure how Vliesline would cope on stretch material.

My Mia!