Child's art turned softie

**Check out my giveaway for one custom art softie featured on www.adelle.com.au, through August 15, 2010!

These softies were designed using my daughter's art. This idea has been floating around in my mind for a while now, and I finally found time to pull them together, and I'm so glad I did. I love seeing her art come alive and watching her squeeze, toss, hug and love on these.

She recently drew the bird, which was the inspiration image that prompted me to get on this project, pronto. I secretly confiscated the drawing from her art table and then worked on it that night after the kids were in bed. 

She squealed with delight when she saw it the next morning, and then she insisted that her brother have one too. We took her art book down from last year and she picked out the perfect image from the archives - a dragon monster she drew that she insists he will love, when he's a bit older, because he might be too afraid of it right now. 

I discovered a really nifty way of transferring the art directly onto fabric using my printer, and it's not mirror image like some of the ways I've seen for transferring. Here's how I did it:

child's art

freezer paper

white cotton - i used a thrifted sheet

rotary cutter

cutting mat and ruler guide

iron

coordinating fabric for back

embroidery hoop, needle and thread

1. Print your child's art directly on fabric using freezer paper and your printer! 

Cut white fabric a few inches bigger than 8.5x11" sheet of paper, and tear off an even bigger sheet of freezer paper. Place white fabric on a towel, place freezer paper glossy side down on the fabric, and iron on medium-high heat to adhere freezer paper to white fabric.

Let cool, then place your sheet on a cutting mat and using a ruler guide and rotary cutter, cut your fabric into a "sheet of paper" 8.5x11" in size.

2. Scan your child's art into your computer. I had to do some inverting, screening, desaturating and deleting and who knows what else or in what order to isolate the lines of the bird from the red paper - I have no idea how I did it once I finally figured it out, it was trial and error, so my suggestion is to start with a drawing from plain white paper and save yourself the headache =)

For the dragon/monster drawing I bumped up the saturation before converting it to grayscale to make the lines easier to see.

When printing, I decreased the opacity to 25% so that it would print faintly on the fabric.

4. Embroider it. Remove freezer paper from back of fabric, and now you're ready to embroider. I didn't have all the right shades of color to recreate the softie using the exact colors of the original art, but Delaney helped me out with the color selections, carefully picking colors she thought her brother would enjoy most. I used the backstitch entirely to embroider the bird. For the dragon monster, I did the backstitch to outline, but it didn't look right when trying to fill in the body sections. I've never embroidered before, so I probably should have researched it and found a better way than how I went about it with the long, loose lines. For the final section of the body, I decided to sew a fabric piece in place that coordinates with the fabric I backed this with - it thought it was a nice touch to tie it all together, and it was a faster fun way to finish this off!

5. Sew it up. Draw a pillow-y shape around the drawing, cut, then trace and cut a matching piece from a colored/patterned/coordinating piece of fabric for the back. Put right sides together, machine sew leaving a small hole for turning, turn, stuff, then hand stitch closed. 

P.S. Delaney wants you to know that we tucked a bell inside her bird softie, and that it jingles and sings to her all day long, but she doesn't know how to put a roar inside the dragon monster, but thinks that will be better for Liam.

P.S.S. I love looking at them side by side, to see Delaney's artistic progression from the past year. And now that I've finished these two, you should see the pile of pictures she has left in my "inbox" insisting they all be made into softies. Oy vey!

While we're having fun playing with softies, Liam's found his own new toy!

Where my new mad embroidering skills may lead...

More embroidered keepsake art treasures:
   ★ art hanging by Soule Mama
   ★ art quilt also by SouleMama =)

Teaching Delaney to embroider too? These two links make it look fun:
   ★ embroidering with children by maya*made
   ★ teach children embroidery by House on Hill Road, via Skip to My Lou
   ★ child sewing basket by The Toby Show