Make A "Faux" Letterman Jacket

Hi again! 

Today I wanted to share one of the projects I was helping a friend with and why I've been so busy! She is one of our youth leaders at church and was in charge of organizing about 45 out of about 250 girls between the ages of 12 and 18 years of age get ready for their annual GIRL'S CAMP!  They had a collegiate theme this year and some genius person came up with the idea of making these out of sweat shirts ! 

the front features "School Letters and Strips"

 

the back features each "athletes" name on the back

 Here's how we made them...

1. Cut a sweat shirt down the front middle to look like a jacket opening. Around the collar cut a little more fabric away as shown here, so it fits a bit better around the collar....

2. Serge the edges or fold over the raw edges and apply a zigzag stitch for a nice clean edge.

3. Using an electronic cutting machine like the Cricut or Silhouette, cut out letters from STIFF FELT. These machines do a great job! WOW! Did it save us LOADS of time over cutting by hand! We choose to use the shadow feature for a more realistic look.

Note: use only stiff felt, regular felt has too much stretch and will not cut well, not even with wonder under!

4. Sew down the letters using your sewing machine.

5. Cut one sleeve open along the seam line going just past the arm pit so you can lay the sleeve as flat as possible.

6. Sew two wide ribbons down creating stripes with your sewing machine. You may want to mark guidelines with a marking tool to make sure you are sewing straight.

 7. Turn the sleeve right sides together and sew or serge the seam closed again using a very narrow seam allowance, so the sleeve does not differ too much it width compared to the other sleeve you are not altering.

8. Use your electronic cutting machine again and create stencils of the names you would like to place on the back. We just used regular paper to create the stencils since they would only be used once then tossed. However, later I realized we could have used FREEZER PAPER and ironed the stencils down for greater stability and less bleeding when stenciling. But they came out great non the less :)

 

We designed the letters in a curve for a more realistic look.

 It was a lot of work to make so many! But it was SO FUN and SO WORTH it to know the girls at camp will love them! They are always so tickled with cutesy stuff like this.

This would be a great summer kids activity too or even something fun you did with a group of friends or family reunion etc.

I'm partying up with this project and linking it to these shin-digs!