Lions and Tigers and Bears - Oh My, What a Refashion!

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! This was a fun refashion project!  If you'd like to have some fun with old tee shirts, this is the refashion for you. Gather together five old tee shirts: yellow/gold, orange, brown, white and a small piece of black. Or whatever color combination suits you best.  

Next, you'll want to download the free pattern for your lion, tiger and bear here.

Now grab some scissors and cut out around the outside lines of the patterns. Pin the patterns onto the appropriate tee shirt scraps and grab a Clorox bleach pen.

 Follow the instructions found here. Once the design has bleached through the fabric, wash the bleach out with soap and water.  When the fabric has dried, you'll need an orange and brown permanent marker, a paint brush and rubbing alcohol.  Let's start with the lion.  Take the brown permanent marker and lightly outline the lion's details.  Add a little marker for shading around it's ear, nose and tail. 

Now, time to play with your tiger.

Using this technique, you'll draw details onto the tee shirt fabric by adding a little orange and brown ink to the areas as shown above.  Don't laugh, but I drew on my fabric upside down and realized it when I went to add the stripes. It didn't really effect the outcome except I had to re-bleach a couple of the areas.

Use a glue stick and small shapes of black knit fabric which has been cut into tiger stripes.  To make the tiger stripes, just cut a bunch a random shapes that have a point on one end.  Glue the stripes onto the bleached tiger shape using the glue stick. Press the stripes in place.  

Using a really small zig zag stitch, sew the stripes onto the tiger. I fluctuated my zig zag stitch from 1.5 to 2.5 wide.

And here's a close-up of the bear which was bleached right onto the fabric of the bottom layer of the dress:

For the pattern, I used a peasant dress style, Simplicity 2377.

Between the animals, I machine embroidered a leaf design and then the words, "OH MY".  

The brown knit tee shirt I used had a sheer chiffon fabric as an overlay. I used that fabric to make the sleeves. The only thing I changed from the original pattern was to the bodice area. It just hung really baggy on my granddaughter, so I made a casing which allowed me to take that area in with elastic.

The headband was made from 1" stripes of the remaining brown knit tee shirt. I found a good tutorial on how to make it here.

Knit dresses are super comfortable. As we walked around the yard taking photos, I couldn't help myself and chanted to this cutie, "Lions and tigers and bears! Oh my!" She's never seen the "Wizard of Oz" movie yet, I'm not sure how a four year old would deal with the wicked witch or the flying monkeys... which really scared her aunts and to this day they hate that movie! What do you think, is she too young for this movie? We'll probably hold off. For now. -xoxo Grandma

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