.:Tutorial Tuesday - Ruffle Number Shirt:.

(Scroll down to see who won the two latest giveaways! They were announced earlier this morning!)

Reece is turning two this weekend (Two? Seriously? Already???) and I wanted her to have a birthday shirt for her party. The theme of her party is CANDY (I'll be posting some of the things I am doing for it next week!) and I figured just something cute and fun would be perfect.

I remembered a cute idea I saw at Swiss Days for ruffle number shirts. Well, we're poor, my husband is in school, so I didn't buy one there. (Sorry to whoever had those darling shirts!) I knew I could re-create something similar for my sweet little girl.

Here's what you need:

- plain shirt (I got one of the $3.50 ones at Wal-Mart)

- fabric for ruffles (I had saved the bottoms of some tank tops I'd cut off to make the tiered shirts, so I used those. They are knit so they won't fray and I didn't have to hem up the edges!)

- sewing machine/accessories

I decided I was going to use three of the colors of cut off tank tops, so I started by cutting those into strips. For my widest layer, I cut the tank top into 2.5 inch strips.

For the middle layer, I cut the tank top into 2 inch strips.

And for the top layer, I cut the tank top into 1.5 inch strips.

Then I cut open the seams, and sewed all of the strips together. I knew I wasn't going to use the entire length of the strip, but I figured better to just have it all and see how much I use!

Then I set my sewing machine to the longest stitch length, and sewed down the middle of my strips.

Gather your strips into ruffles by pulling on only the top or bottom thread. You can adjust it however you need to along the way.

Next I pinned the strips together.

After that, I pinned the strips on to the shirt in the shape of the number two.

Then I sewed it on to the shirt!

Once it was done, we had a little pre-birthday modeling session! Pretty cute, right? (Yep, she looks like a two year old! What happened to my baby??)

Now she's ready to party!