Upcycling with Amy

I'm a sucker for a contest, and I'm also a sucker for Amy Butler's fabrics. So when Ohdeedoh announced a new contest last week--with the prize being Amy Butler books and fabric and other goodies--the wheels started turning.

I've been meaning to do something along these lines for a while, so whether I even have a shot at the prizes or not, at least I can check something off my to-do list.

I've made things from scratch with Amy's gorgeous fabric before, including these curtains, this dress and this romper.

For this project, I used Amy's fabric to applique fun shapes onto some of the girls' old clothes. Here's a bit from my contest entry:

Among our friends, my husband and I are one of the last couples to have kids, so we often are the grateful beneficiaries of everyone's hand-me-down clothes. The clothes are super as they are, but I'm always thinking of ways I can tweak and personalize them to either bring them up to date or hide little stains (most of which my own children are responsible for creating). What I did here was to applique fun shapes onto the secondhand clothes, covering up mass-produced floral embroidery or the leftovers from last week's spaghetti dinner. I traced images onto interfacing, ironed the interfacing to the fabric, then cut along the lines. Then I ironed the shape onto the old clothes and zigzag stitched around the edges. I also added new cuffs to the purple "'S' is for Snake" dress and had planned to sew a ruffle underneath, but I didn't get that far. The figure on the back of the pink hoodie is of the Space Needle--perfect for our trip to Seattle next weekend.

I should have taken better "before" photos, but these pictures will give you an idea of the original look of the clothes:

And here are some "after" shots:

And here are the girls either a) basking in the glee of Amy Butler applique fashion or b) plotting to drive their mother crazy:

Update:

Here are the images I traced for some of the shapes ...

Giraffe from www.letmecolor.com

Pear from www.epaek.com 

Space Needle from puyallupgemclub.org

Comments

[Klay]

Really sweet idea! I love the pear.

[Megan]

Thanks, Klay! The pear ended up being bigger than I wanted, but it sort of had to be because I was covering a big hunk of embroidery.
I have to admit Bo hasn't been thrilled by my sewing projects lately, but she got excited when she saw these this morning. She had a hard time choosing which one to wear to preschool (the bunny won).

[Jill]

These are fantastic. So easy and inspirational.

[Megan]

Thanks, Jill! I just stopped by your blog and noticed you have three boys. You could have so much fun appliqueing boy-inspired shapes. I hate to be so stereotypical, but I'm thinking trucks and dinosaurs and cars and (sweet) monsters, etc.. Boys get the shaft when it comes to clothes, but you could make some otherwise boring clothes pretty dang cute.
Speaking of boys, did anyone see the post on Ohdeedoh this week about how it wasn't until the 1940s or so that pink started to be associated with girls and blue with boys? It used to be the opposite, because red was the color of strength and courage and so people used pink with boys because it's kind of a watered down red for those little men-in-training. I thought it was interesting. Almost made me want to have another kids so it could be a boy and I could paint his room pink. And then the two children I already have started driving me crazy so I searched high and low for the phone number for the vasectomy doc.

[Megan]

Here's a link to the pink-for-boys discussion I was talking about:
http://www.ohdeedoh.com/ohdeedoh/look/look-pink-bedroom-for-a-boy-063365

[Carolyn L.]

These are great, Megan! Where did you find the giraffe template? My little kiddo has a recent fascination with giraffes ...

[Megan]

Ah! I'm terrible. I can't believe I didn't link to the sources of the shapes, especially since I've blogged about one of them (the giraffe) before.

Here you go:
For the giraffe: www.letmecolor.com/
For the Space Needle: puyallupgemclub.org/
For the pear: www.epaek.com
The snake and the letter “S” were my own, as if you couldn't tell.
The bunny was mine, too, but it's a mess. I shouldn't have tried to do all four legs. I can't remember what animal J thought it was at first, but "bunny" didn't spring to his mind.

Thanks, Carolyn. This was a fun project, and it's making me consider a trip to Other Mothers (secondhand store).