I am part of the Emblish Is For Boys series on Gracious Threads! This week I was challenged to use zippers and/or hardware to embelish a boys tshirt! Here is my post for her blog:

First off a huge THANK YOU to Jess for inviting me on this awesome series and for giving me a little push out of my comfort zone. Now let’s start the introductions. My name is Rebekah from RebekahSews. I am excited to say that I recently started a Facebook page too! If you have seen my work around you have most likely seen my baby girl modeling most items. Sprinkled here or there are my two crazy yet imaginative boys. Let’s face it; it is harder to sew for boys. Fewer patterns, less frills, and some would say less fun. Not so! There is plenty of fun for boys, especially if you get a little creative. I am loving all the ideas since this series started.

When Jess first asked me to be apart of this week I think I may have asked her a couple of times if there was any other theme dates available until I finally decided it was time to just take the plunge and work with zippers and hardware. I don’t work with zippers…period. I think I may have installed one once upon a time. Honestly I don’t remember. Perhaps I blocked it out? So now I needed to add a zipper to a shirt for a boy. What was I possibly going to do?? As I was changing out my boys winter to summer wardrobes I came across a too small Superman shirt. That finally started the wheels turning. I don’t know about you but there is always a little thrill when Clark Kent opens his shirt to reveal Superman underneath. Now what if I could give that to my boys? They would love it! So this shirt was created. I used the Lane Raglan pattern by Stitchwerx Designs for my base t-shirt and went from there.

Besides the zipper across the center there are two snaps at the top and bottom. Those are pure decoration (and also hiding my not so great cutting when I cut the area for the zipper! Who else loves happy accidents?) Then on either side of the zipper are two more snaps. These are functional as you will see in the photos further down. Now for the big reveal!!!!

I think he was pretty happy with that. When I first showed him the shirt, his response was, “This is awesome!!! Can I keep it?” I think he may have asked several more times while I was taking photos.

I love it when just something as simple as a shirt sends them on imaginative adventures. He is flying if you couldn’t tell!

Now back to the snaps. When the zipper is open to reveal Superman it needed a way to stay open in order to really see the full effect. That is where the snaps come in to play. They snap together and viola! Here is my little Superman!

As you can see there is a little color blocking going on as well. That is mostly because I didn’t feel like doing hems. I shortened the pattern in the arms and body in order to add the hems from another shirt to give that color blocking effect! This made it fun in the back too!

My oldest has already asked if he could have one too! I was going to make him one for this post as well, but because I am a super horrible procrastinator I wasn’t able to get it done in time. That will happen sometime this summer as I would love to put a tutorial out. This way every little boy can have their own superhero reveal!
Make sure you check out her blog to see all the other wonderful creations in this series and enter the giveaway!