Pink Jellyfish Parker Tee for my Boy

After the fun of partcipating last year, I was eager to join in Season 4 of the annual Boys Can Wear Pink blog tour, hosted by Kelly at Handmade Boy. I quickly signed up, started planning shirts for all three of my sons, and asked them about what they might want. My oldest son informed me in no uncertain terms that he would not wear pink at all and my heart fell a little. I didn’t really want to expend the effort making something that would be shoved to the back of the drawer and forgotten, so I switched gears and decided to focus on my middle son this year. He’s always game for a fun new shirt!

I pulled some fabric that had pink jellyfish on it out of my stash to see what he thought of it. He LOVED it and told me how he NEEDED a new “jellyfish shirt” since his old one was getting too short. I knew he’d outgrown that “jellyfish shirt,” which I sewed for him several years ago, and had had an inkling he would let go of it more easily if he got a replacement first. Sneaky, right? Haha.

Together, we picked out a coordinating solid blue and looked at online coloring pages for inspiration on a jellyfish shape to applique on the front of his shirt. Luckily, the heart I’d cut out of the back of his sister’s dress two weeks ago was still sitting on my sewing desk because the pink matched perfectly and it was just the right size to trim into a jellyfish body. My son’s big request was that it have “crazy eyes” like on his old shirt. I pulled up all the eye embroidery designs I owned and he picked “the best ones ever” to stitch onto the pink body.

Before attaching the jellyfish body to the shirt front, I used my sewing machine’s triple stretch stitch to “draw” the tentacles. Since I’m not gifted in free-hand drawing, I chose to print one of the coloring pages with fairly easy lines to follow. I pinned the paper to the shirt front and stitched the lines right through it. The stitching perforated the paper so it was easy to pull off when I’d finished, leaving behind only the pink outlines of tentacles. Then I placed the body over the tops of the tentacles and stitched it in place. My only regret is not changing my bobbin thread to match because pulling the paper off pulled the stitches slightly and the white bobbin thread shows slightly. My boy says it’s perfect, though, so I’m trying not to focus on that (and crossing my fingers that a trip through the wash will even the stitches back out a bit).

My boy is thrilled with his new jellyfish shirt and even willingly got his old one out of his drawer and gave it to his little brother. I call that a win in my book!

Happy Sewing!!  ~  Joelle

P.S. Don’t miss out on all the stops this week on the Boys Can Wear Pink tour. I’ve seen some sneak peeks and these ladies and their boys are rocking the pink creations!