as Celebrate the Boy kicks off over at MADE and Made by Rae, i thought it’d be fun to bring home a post i did for I’m Feelin’ Crafty’s “Sew Ready to Play” series a few months back.   O is actually wearing this shirt today, though it’s starting to look even tighter on his growing toddler belly!

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growing up, i was the kid who didn’t have any sort of video game system at home and was constantly trying to talk the neighbor kids into playing nintendo.  if you were the kid with a nintendo, you probably had an annoying friend like me, right?  i was pretty persuasive in getting the neighbor kids to play (not too hard), and i especially loved super mario bros.  i’m talking about the original one here…super mario 2 was fine, 3 was better (remember how you could drop behind the background?) but the original was the best.  it’s still fun…have you played it lately?  do you remember how to turtle top?  i could never quite get the hang of it.

so anyway, it was almost a no brainer that i needed to make my toddler son a super mario t-shirt for this series!

i used my favorite basic pattern, made by rae’s flashback skinny tee, and knit fabric from two sale rack men’s shirts (my tips for sewing with sale rack t-shirts here).  i appliquéd a mario scene right onto the front!  the scene appliqué idea came from my friend cherie, and what exactly to put on there came from a quick google search of super mario bros images.  want to make one?

gather scraps together in the appropriate colors along with some steam-a-seam lite fusible web…

draw a grid of 1/2″ squares for the stairs then cut them out, and a strip of woodgrain fabric at 1/2″ for a base.  sketch and cut out clouds, a pipe, a hill, and bricks.  i then added a little stamped mushroom left over from one of my project run & play creations!  i just played around with the scraps until i had the shapes i wanted.

add the fusible web to each piece and arrange the scene on the front piece of the shirt, not yet sewn together.  once you have everything where you want it, fuse it down with an iron and then stitch around each item with black thread, for a sketchy outline look.  if you’re good with a free motion foot i’d recommend that here for the little curves, but i used my regular foot and just lifted it up a lot as i sewed around.

finish the shirt as instructed per the pattern, slap it on your little guy, and he’ll be looking like a child of the ’80s!

i love how this skinny tee clings to his toddler belly…

and he likes how soft and comfy it is!

ready to play!  thanks so much for having me, Louise!!

PS – i didn’t even realize when i was making this how close the colors and theme were to narelle’s post from the other day!  who doesn’t like old school video games, eh?