Birthday Cupcake Shirt Tutorial

With the help of my crafty neighbor, who has almost the entire stock of Hobby Lobby fabric in her craft room (yay me!)- I was able to create my little girl’s birthday cupcake shirt.  Here is the tutorial:

Materials needed:

Fabric for cupcake bottom

Fabric for “frosting”

Ribbon for candles

Plain white tee

Iron on jewels for candle flame

Thread

Heat N Bond Iron on Adhesive

Fray check

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First I had to decide what fabric to use for the project.  Like I said, my neighbor has an amazing stash so she saved me a ton of time and a trip to the fabric store.  She helped me choose a purple fabric with pink flowers for the base, a pink rosette trim for the frosting, and green ribbon for the candles.

• ­  I chose a pink tulle rosette trim from Hobby Lobby to add texture and interest to the cupcake frosting, but if you don’t have this particular trim- you can make little rosettes out of any fabric with THIS awesome tutorial from Little Birdie Secrets.  OR you can just choose a coordinating fabric and cut out a “cloud” shape for the frosting.

Next you need to apply Heat N Bond to your fabric that you plan on cutting out.  Heat N Bond is purchased at the fabric store or Walmart and looks like this:

You then take the Heat N Bond and iron it to the back of the fabric by following the package instructions.  Make sure the paper side is facing up.

Next I drew my cupcake base onto the paper side of the fabric and cut AROUND it to make a smaller piece to work with.

I then fold the fabric down the center of the cupcake in order to cut an even cupcake.  Cut along the lines and you won’t have to worry about matching both sides up.

Now that I have the cupcake base, I take the paper off the back, place the Heat N Bond side down onto the middle of the T-Shirt, and iron it.  The Heat N Bond will adhere the cupcake to the shirt for extra stability.

Next, I sew it onto the T-Shirt using a small zig-zag stitch in coordinating thread.

I then added the frosting by placing three tulle rosettes on the base of the frosting and adding two on top- creating a pyramid of fabric frosting.

I pinned these pieces into place using a stick pin inserted vertically and then sewed a line all around the edge with a straight stitch in pink thread.

Now I needed to apply the candles so I cut three candles from green ribbon and applied fray check to ensure that they wouldn’t fray.  I also clipped the tops to create the tapered candle look.

Next I sewed the candle tops above the frosting using a contrasting straight stitch.  I would recommend applying some adhesive to the backs of these because they kept moving around and annoying me.

Almost done!!

Now I enlisted the help of my crafty neighbor- who has a bejeweling thingamajig and she added some jewels onto the candles for me.

BUT if you don’t have a super crafty neighbor with neato crafting toys- then you can easily do this yourself by using the iron on jewels that you can purchase at any fabric store or even Walmart!  Just follow the package instructions.

The result!!

A super easy T-Shirt and a super happy birthday girl!

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial!  And happy crafting!

~Elizabeth