Girly Zoo Shirts

A few weeks ago I got an order that I almost turned down since my to do list was lengthy and I was heading into a crazy couple of months. But I entertained the idea and I'm so glad I did!

Nicole requested shirts for a set of cousins to wear to the zoo.  She wanted each to have a different animal (hippo, monkey, and giraffe) and wanted them to be girly -- eyelashes and bows. Initially my thought was, oh dear, how will I find a set of those designs?

I started by using one of my best friends --google image search. I searched for a hippo appliqué design first, since I figured that was less common than the giraffe and monkey. Lo and behold, a cute hippo image popped up... A design I already owned!!! I hopped over to my Embroidery Library design folder to see what other appliqué animals I could find, and would you believe I also had a monkey and a giraffe?? Crazy I tell you. I had purchased both the Baby Animals and Noah's Ark sets from Embroidery Library YEARS ago, and completely forgotten I had them. So just like that I found matching animals!

My next step was to use another best friend -- Embird. I resized a couple to make them a touch larger, and then these animals needed eyelashes. I plucked them off of a Lynnie Pinnie design in my stash and inserted them onto my animals. Instantly girly!  Ta-Da!

 

Their names were added with the Bonnie font from 8 Claws and a Paw.

 

 

I used actual bows instead of embroidered ones.  These are from the three-packs sold at Hobby Lobby (with the tails trimmed short). As I was preparing to hand sew them on, I remembered a tutorial posted on MCA Applique's blog which suggested using the button stitch on my sewing machine. Oh my!! Was that ever easy!! Thanks Melissa for a great idea. (Since then I've actually been brave enough to use that stitch to reattach a button to a pair of shorts. Why haven't I used this feature before now?!?!)