Hey everyone!
Welcome to Squirrelly Minds’ first guest post! Anita graciously offered to do an absolutely lovely sewing DIY. How fun!
Enjoy!

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Hello! Here’s Anita, I usually blog for Occupy the Wardrobe or at my own little corner of the blogosphere, but today I’m here at Squirrelly Minds to share a DIY I originally made for Valentine’s Day (a heart sweater, awwww) but never documented the step by step. So I grabbed another sweater and did it again!

It’s a quick (okay, quick is a relative word) and simple DIY that you can do to update a sweater or t-shirt you don’t like so much (I have a few of those…). It’s easy enough for a kid to do it —as long as you trust your kid to deal with needles and pins, of course— and it’s fun! This dinosaur sweater is my second try at doing this. Last year I found a dark gray sweater I really liked at Forever 21 and went back for one in each color the next day. But the thing is, I really liked how the gray one looked on me, but the others? Eh, not so much. So they were relegated to a cold corner of my wardrobe till I decided to try this!

You’ll need the following:

I like using 100% cotton fabric, it’s easy to deal with and they come is so many colors and patterns. I try to pick contrasting colors that look good together. For the dinosaur sweater (I’ve been wanting to make one since Valentine’s Day when Google’s doodle has the little boy giving the girl a dinosaur sweater — who doesn’t love dinosaurs?) I picked a forest green that was on clearance. I didn’t want anything with pattern for this. I think I could have done some things better: I wish I had used a brighter color for the thread for example, or maybe a more vivid green, or a bigger dinosaur. But overall, I think this looks adorable, even if a little rough on the edges. I added a picture of the other sweater I made at the end of this post.

01. First you need to print (or draw, if you are so inclined) the template of whatever you want to put on your sweater! You can get the dinosaur template here. Then with paper scissors, cut it out. Tip: the template should always be something simple, like a silhouette. The less details, the easier it is to make it look good.
02. With your paper template cut, place it and pin it on top of the fabric you are going to use.
03. Using fabric scissors (it will make it SO much easier, I promise), cut the dinosaur out of your fabric. CAREFULLY.
04. Place your cut fabric on top of the sweater to see if you like it, and what position would it look better. This is the time to make changes in case you don’t like it.
05. Secure it to the sweater with lots of pins.
06. You can use embroidery thread, or you can do it like I did, and get normal cotton thread, and thread 4 pieces of it together to make a thicker thread.
07. Start stitching!
08. Now, this is going to take a while, so my recommendation? Pick a movie, put it on and enjoy! May I suggest…

After about two hours, you should be done stitching the entire dinosaur (or whatever else you chose). And that’s it! Try it on and rock it!

I thought this could also be a cool way to personalize PJs, or making matching Christmas sweaters (but keep it classy).

Hope you enjoyed this easy tutorial, and I want to see your creations!