How I Embellished a Tank Top (Or Using Up the Leftovers)

I'm sure you've all seen tutorials for making fabric flowers (if not, you can look here, here, or here). I have made these flowers in a variety of sizes out of calico, felt (here I made a hairbow bouquet for a baby shower)  and -- my favorite -- old t-shirts (here and here).

There are a couple of different ways to cut out the petals; I've cut out circles and I've cut out kind of free-form flowers. I tend to like the circles for little-girl hairbows, since they give more of a pom-pom feel, and the petals for anything that needs to look a little more lady-like.

For this project, I used tan muslin and bright white cotton left over from other projects. I cut out 3 free-form flower templates (small, medium and large).

Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of the smallest size. I didn't realize until the very end that I was going to need it, sadly.

To make flowers like the one on the tank top, you will need to cut:

8 large petals (4 in tan and 4 in white) --this is the base for the 2 larger flowers
16 medium petals (8 in tan and 8 in white) -- these are the middle section of the large flowers, and make up the smaller one
2 small petals (I did these in white)

The other tutorials say to hot glue the petals together. Since my flowers were going on a shirt, I had to stitch them together and then stitch them on the shirt.

I got the tank on clearance at WalMart for $3...I actually like their tanks for layering because 1) they're inexpensive, 2) they're readily available, and 3) they're longer than some of the other tanks I've found...nobody likes a tank that creeps up, right?

This project took me about an hour to finish, I think; but then, I had two extra kiddos that day, so there was a lot of stopping-and-starting involved. That's just how it goes sometimes...we do what we can, when we can!!!

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