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Activity Car Shirt

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DSCF6686 - CopyYou know the cozy car caddy from Homemade by Jill? Well, my kids have been hoping that I would make one for them, as well. They will be getting one for Valentine’s Day, along with a car shirt that I adapted from the car caddy. I figured, “Why not wear the fun?” So today I will show you how they can have their own Activity Car Shirt! I actually tried the shirt on one of my sons yesterday when I was finished, and he immediately laid down with a huge grin on his face, took out a car, and started driving it around on his 5. He didn’t want to take it off, but since he knew it’s for V-day, he decided I could have it back. Then he showed his older brother, and he said, “That’s awesome! Can you make me one too?” So, there you go, an almost 5 year old and 6 year old like the cheesiness this shirt is:).

I used the template Jill has on her site for the car caddy. I just made it a little bit bigger to make sure that two cards would fit inside of it (the car will be a pocket). My car measures about 6 1/4″ long, and 3 1/4″ tall. Cut a piece of felt about the size of the front of the shirt. Grab some buttons, or cut out some circles for the wheels. Cut about 6-8 1/4″ wide 1″ long strips of yellow felt, and trace the word CARS on freezer paper using your favorite font, and some fusible interfacing (not pictured). Iron the letters CARS onto some black felt, being careful not to melt it! (cause mine did)
Cut out the letters. Since you ironed on your freezer paper, this is really easy to do.
Even with the A or R, you can still get that shape out of the middle easily!
Hand-draw a large number or shape. OK, so originally, I had envisioned the shirt with a curvy road going all around the front. After 3 attempts, that just wasn’t working (mostly because my felt piece was really narrow and I didn’t want to buy more). One of my “roads” looked just like a 3, and I thought, “That’s it! I’ll just do the number to match their age!” Or maybe their favorite number, or whatever. My son is still actually 4 but turns 5 in two weeks. I tried to keep my number’s thickness about 3 inches so there was room for 2 lanes.


Next, cut out the five, and then pin the yellow strips evenly spaced around it.

Sew them on. You can see I just did one line down the middle:
I hand-stitched my letters on. I didn’t really do it at this point, but you will be happy if you do:).

Cut out some fusible interfacing if you have some to make the car more sturdy, and iron on. Your stitches will now be nicely ironed in and unable to be pulled on by the cars.

Take the car and sew around the edge with a straight stitch.
At this point, I kind of placed all my pieces on top of the shirt to see how I wanted it placed, then I pinned everything to the shirt. Start with the number if that is the bottom piece (as in, the car might overlap it or something). Just sew over about 1/4″ or less, even, if you want! It doesn’t really matter so much.
Pin the car where you want it, and starting with where the car curves down, sew along the same line you just did in the previous step. Make sure you stop about the same curved area on the other side of the car, after going along the bottom, so that there is about a 3 1/2″ opening.
After doing that, sew about 1/2″ back and forth where you see the green circle. Just straight down, but not all the way through the car. The cars will fit nicer if you just leave the rest un-sewn through, but it will also help keep the cars in the pocket with this little stitch. Sew on the buttons.

That’s it!

I made another for my other son.
Then made some car caddy’s using houndstooth. I was hesitant at first, but I love it.

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Comments

  1. These are too cute!! Your blog is so precious, why don’t you have more followers?? I’m going to email your link to Kari, from Ucreate. And I’ll put your link on my sidebar, too! You’re so talented! :o)

  2. Just discovered your blog from Disney and am featuring you as the new creative blog {on my sidebar} for a couple of days! Thanks for sharing your creativity with us!

  3. Hey Sis! Congrats on being discovered!!! You’re going to be all over blogland now!

    Those are super cute shirts! Come up with a clever idea for girls shirts.

  4. YAY YAY YAY YAY Christie!! I’m so excited for you. You are absolutley amazing. I’m so glad you decided to do this blog “public” so everyone can see how awesome you are :)

  5. hi from New Zealand, I discovered your blog from ucreate- it is just gorgeous! thanks so much for following my blog too :) have a lovely rest of your week, from megan in kiwiland

  7. My sister and I are always looking for crafts for boys, She has 3 of them and we can never find cute crafty stuff for them, so thanks for the cute ideas!

  12. Super cute! If I can ever find the foot to my sewing machine (argh!), I will totally make one of these adorable shirts for my 16 month old son! (Found you from the mention on Disney’s blog)

  14. Finally! I found this project on your site a long time ago while I was surfing all the wonderful craft sites out there…I couldn’t remember where I saw it afterwards and wanted desperately to make one for my son for his 5th birthday. I was ready to give up and just try to figure it out myself when I found the project again! Yay! Thank you so much for sharing this with all your readers. What a great idea!
    http://thecraftinggoddess.blogspot.com

  15. This is such an ‘out of the box’ idea- you are very creative! My 2 year old would LOVE a shirt like this!