Martha Stewart Craft Challenge #1: Eyeball T - shirts

I was really excited about how this challenge turned out. The top pic is how Maratha's turned out. The pic just below is how ours turned out. I think they turned out AWESOME. We changed a few things, we made some alien eyes, and some dinosaur eyes. Overall the directions were really super clear and doable for two reasonably intelligent women.

The "real" part of the craft.... cutting the white fabric for the eyeballs works best with a rotary cutter. It took us both about 2-3 hours to get the fabric cut, and for Terra to get eyeballs painted. It took me an extra two hours to get my eyeballs painted because I have issues and go too slow. We didn't even get to pinning and sewing until the next day. I think for the practical mom with kiddos, plan for splitting the steps into two days.m The kids wanted to paint their own eyeballs, but I decided not to go that route. They were VERY curious, I would recommend moving the eyeballs to a higher location if you have littles underfoot. Regardless of how you feel about your eyeballs when they are just on the white fabric, it all comes together with the eyelids sewn in. It hides a multitude of sins...

Also, instead of using tulip fabric paint, we used craft paint with a medium added to make it permanent. What was awesome about this is that it gave us a much bigger range of colors, and it let us add glitter or iridescent effects to our eyeballs.


Tools and Materials
Old white T-shirt
Pencil
Fabric paint in assorted colors (we used craft paint with a medium added to make it permanent)
Paintbrushes
Scissors
Measuring tape
Colored T-shirt
Pins
Sewing machine threaded with coordinating thread


Eyeball T-shirts How-To
1. Cut a white T-shirt into 3-by-5-inch pieces. Draw an eye shape, and circles within the eye shapes, onto each piece with a pencil.

2. Paint circles blue, green, or brown; let dry. Paint pupils with black paint. Accent by painting a white dot onto the pupil for shine, and red streaks onto whites of eyes to make them look bloodshot; let dry.

3. Trim around the eyes, leaving 1/4 inch all around for seam allowance. Turn a colored T-shirt inside out and pin eyes into place, face down. Use 5 to 6 eyes on the front and 1 on the center back. Sew around each eye.

4. Turn shirt right-side out. Cut a small hole in only the top layer of the center of the eye area. Trim fabric inside the stitches to reveal the eye, leaving a small amount for eyelid.

Stay tuned for our next challenge: Martha Stewart Crab Cakes vs. Paula Deen's Crabcakes