I have seen a lot of appliqued “MAMA” shirts advertised and thought it was a cute trend, but I took it up a notch. I have been saving a bag of old, stained up baby clothes with the intentions of making a quilt one day, so I used some of those for the letters. I also opted for “MOM” because my kids are all older and my title is Mother/Madre/Mother Dear/Mom but “Mama” is long gone. (Insert sappy tears here.)

Choosing which clothes to use was actually the hardest part! I was very careful to use portions that didn’t have stains and I couldn’t use the knees because they were worn thin from crawling babies.

I used heat’n’bond to apply the letters to the front of the shirt and stitched around them with my machine. I could have used a zig-zag stitch but it wasn’t looking great with the stretchy fabrics and since they won’t fray anyway I just used a straight stitch close to the edge. I still wanted the letters to be outlined, though, so I did a reverse chainstitch with perle cotton embroidery thread around the edges. I really love the added texture that gives!

The shirt is Miss Heron by Sofiona Designs and I opted for the raglan version simply because I already had the pattern printed. The Dolman version would have been cute too!

I used some amazingly soft, bamboo french terry that I bought a few years ago with plans to finally sew something for myself. My body has been changing in crazy ways since then and I am tired of waiting for a new normal. I mean, I have the ability to alter if needed or just sew something new. Constant change is my new normal, I suppose. I may as well adapt.

I did record the process to make an instructional video for Sofiona Designs. Here’s that:

Happy Mother’s Day to me!

Pattern:
Miss Heron Shirt