Father's Day High Five!

On Sunday my husband, Zach was able to celebrate his first Father's Day as a new dad!  Our son, Mordecai, is only two and a half months old, but he was still able to help me make a special gift for his daddy. 

The first tricky step was getting a tracing of Zach's hand without him suspecting or knowing too much.  I then traced the hand outline onto some freezer paper and ironed it shiny-side down onto a new, plain blue T-shirt.  This gave me the pattern for a reverse applique design.

I had an old, paint-splotched green T-shirt that I cut up and pinned to the inside of the blue shirt, behind the hand pattern.  This way, I was able to sew directly along the hand pattern through both layers of T-shirt material.

After doing a simple machine straight-stitch, I carefully peeled away the freezer paper.  Then came the tricky part!

I had to carefully trim the blue T-shirt away from the design to reveal the green T-shirt material underneath.  This had to be done without accidentally snipping the green material!

The end result turned out well, though.  I really like how the reverse applique gave me a casual, textured edge around the design. 

Last but not least, I added Mordecai's handprint to the center of the hand cutout.  Have you ever tried to get a handprint from a two month old?  It's not easy!  I waited until he was asleep so that he wouldn't wiggle as much... but the paint still got everywhere!  In the end I had to paint in his handprint a little since the true handprint was too light... and Mordecai had blue fingers for a week!

The end result:  priceless!