Blue's Clues Steve Shirt

All of my kids have been big Blue's Clues fans, probably because I think it is a really cute show and have encouraged it. Miss B. was Blue for Halloween when she was two. It was just a simple one piece 

pajama-ish outfit with a hood with ears, but it was plenty cute. Of course I kept it and my son wore it too (but not for Halloween). Then came the twins, and they really like Blue, so I decided for Halloween that they could be Steve and Blue! Trying to find a Steve shirt is near impossible these days, and Ebay is not cheap. 

But I found a shirt at Target that I thought would do.

Mr. A. saw it and said, "Teve! Teve" and immediately attempted to remove his current shirt. I showed the hubs and figured Mr. A. could wear it as is, but Hubs asked if I was going to make it more Steve like, so I decided I should.

Let me preface this with saying there is probably an easier way to do this, a prettier way, but this was the way that worked for us. :)

I decided I could just zig zag stitch some felt on there. I should have planned just a tiny bit better, but more about that later.

First take your piece of felt and measure the stripes you need to cover. 

Fold felt so you can cut as many stripes as you can. I just used some sheets of felt I had laying around (that was my mistake)

Pin stripe on. I did try doing it without pinning, and for me, well, it wasn't pretty. So I ended up picking it out and starting over.

Zig zag stitch a stripe on. You don't have to zig zag it, but I think it will hold better, and looks cuter.

The stripe that went just under the v-neck opening was a bit tricker, as I had to sew it inside as well.

 Because I used felt rectangles I had about 3 of that color. I thought it would be easy to get more and just wanted to get started one day. WalMart only had single sheets in certain colors, this green not being one of them. I could buy a whole new pack with this color, but I already 2 of them at home, and they weren't in my current budget. I decided I would buy some fleece off the bolt, thinking that there must be something close to the color. I looked and looked and looked, and they had barely any felt at all on the bolt. I made a special trip to Hancock (special as in taking twins with me and attempting to find something that was proving difficult! ha!) They were entirely out of their single sheets. But thankfully they had some felt on the bolt, and they had a similar enough green to finish up. It did not match exactly, but it would have to do, because we were getting down to crunch time.

Around the armpit was trickier for me as well. I did not feel like unpicking the store stitching on the shirt, so I turned the shirt inside out and sewed in a straight line as close to the armpit as possible.

 So the thread was white, but barely noticeable.

Then the felt rectangles were not long enough, so I had to stitch a piece to the other piece. I tried to keep this in the back so it would not be seen as much.

 Also, after sewing the stripes on I could see there was some excess felt where the two pieces met up, so I just took some scissors and trimmed the excess off.

Then I attempted to sew the sleeves, but 2T shirt sleeves are pretty skinny and I could not get it around my machine to sew. Well, I got it around it, but it was so ridiculous to sew, so I improvised and got out the hot glue gun!

I thought much of it looked sloppy, but I just needed to get it done. And the main idea of this post is to let you know what whatever you make for your children, whether it turns out what you had envisioned or not, your little one will love it! My little man was so excited to wear his Steve shirt. Did the sleeve stripes match? No. Did the hot gluing look as good as the sewing? No. Did my almost 2 year old care about my sewing skills? No. Did they look super cute in their costumes? Heck Yes!

We went to a church Trunk-or-Treat and the boys got soooo many compliments on their costumes. And they were super easy, especially just adding a pair of tan pants to Steve's shirt. :)

Here is the post for the easy Handy Dandy Notebook Trick or Treat Bags.