Oh my gracious! Happy Thanksgiving, y’all! Let me tell you three sweeties for whom I am very grateful: three of my sweet nieces! I set out to try to make them each a special shirt for a little gift from Aunt Gina… [But don’t tell them, okay, shhh!]

So I pulled out a stack of scraps in each of their respective favorite colors and started playing around. Blue for A, aqua for E, and pink for I. Thankfully, unlike my little lady, whose name begins with a nice curvy letter, each of these nieces A, E, and I each has a lovely angular letter to work with. Perfect! So I settled on a pieced monogram/initial tee design. Wanna make one with me? Yay!

Thankfully, I had my trusty self-healing mat, rotary cutter, and quilting ruler to make laying out the letters relatively easy. Each letter is about 4″ wide by 6″ tall (the “A” is a little wider).

You could pin all your pieces in place or even use Heat ‘n’ Bond to attach them… But I love to grab my handy dandy can of spray glue.

Spray glue the back of each letter piece and position them on the shirt.

Spray glue is great because you can reposition the pieces until they are just right, and then they will stay in place while you sew.

To secure each letter, zig-zag stitch around the edges and overlapping seams. Easy peasy!

And when you get to a corner, just plunge your needle in then lift the foot to pivot the fabric (then put the foot back down and carry on).

Easy peasy!

Gah! So cute! I hope they lurve them to bits!

I ran them through the wash one more time, rolled them up, added a little ribbon, and they were ready to be given! Wheeee!

Yay, I love a handmade gift… Are you jumping on the bandwagon yet?? Whatcha gonna make? Do tell!