Cute as a Bug

Our ladybug outfit turned out great!

The tee-shirt we did with a freezer paper stencil method I originally saw on angry chicken.

You cut a stencil out of freezer paper and just iron it waxy side down to the shirt. Use another sheet of freezer paper, ironed to the wrong side to make it stiff and to separate the front of the shirt from the back, so the paint doesn't bleed through.

This is such a fun project for mom and kids: you cut the stencil, and they can just blob the paint right on with no fear of messing up. Then you can "clean it up" a little, getting rid of excess paint and making sure it is opaque all the way to the edges.

We did one last spring and it was quite a hit, and the shirt wore well all summer. The red is Jacquard fabric paint and I added the black details with a fabric marker.

Here is a close up of the ribbon I used for the pants. I got this at a booth called "Nifty Thrifty Dry Goods" at Chicago Quilt Festival. It was a huge booth filled with vintage and new trims and buttons. Incredible. I was so blown away by the entire booth, and I had never seen them before at any quilt or sewing show, so I asked about their store. She said there is no store and no website, and they just do a few shows a year, Houston and Chicago Quilt Festival and an Ann Arbor flea market.

I joked "Oh, you're like Brigadoon!" (Thinking that they just showed up with a gorgeous booth a few times a year and then disappeared back into the mists.) (If you are too young, or musical-theater deprived, you might not get the reference.) Perhaps I was just too giddy with quilt-show-overload, or maybe she didn't get it, but she didn't crack even the tiniest smile. Oh well, you can't please everyone.

I just slapped that onto the bottom of the jeans and sewed it down.



This is how much I had left over after the pants:


So I used most of it for a little square patch on the bottom of the tee-shirt.


And here's the whole outfit:


I love it so much; I want one!

Is that so wrong?