Box Font birthday shirts for boys

It's time for Jimmie's birthday again! He's having a Thomas party and requested Itch 2 Stitch's Box Font Number 4 with Thomas fabric. I added his name with 8CP's Tiny font.

It turned out so well that I decided to use the same idea for Jackson, my son's little buddy whose Cars themed party was yesterday. I used the Box Font 5 with I2S's Barnyard font for his name. He LOVED it and was quite proud to wear it all day. Warms my heart. :)

Quick comparison picture to show you how I improved on an earlier experiment. My very first project with I2S's Box font was Dashiell's shirt, but honestly while I loved the idea of combining the Lightning McQueen fabric with the checkered flag fabric, it was too busy and his name got lost. Going with solid black for Jackson was definitely an improvement!

Using a fabric with a printed motif can be tricky... let me show you how I figured out what to do. I draped the fabric over my computer screen where I could see the embroidery design, and get my fabric perfectly placed:

 Then I take a picture of it with my phone and pull it into Photoshop. I do some rough, and I mean ROUGH painting to see if I like what I see. :)  If so, then I use a water soluble marking pen on the fabric so I can line up the fabric with the placement lines at the embroidery machine.

 

Here's the preview image I sent for Jimmie's design. This literally was the ONLY fabric position where I could get all the Thomas images facing up.

You can really make fabric work for you in an applique design with just a little extra effort!