Two-many: Superhero Peplums

Finally the girls are properly outfitted! Ha. They've been asking for super hero shirts ever since they started picking up books about them at the library (maybe six months ago?). They love reading about these guys. Their favorites are Iron Man, Batman, and Wonder Woman.

They each picked a shirt for me to make. I used the Pretty In Peplum pattern and shopped in the Men's section of Walmart for knit fabric. It was the only place I saw the colors I wanted at the right price. Did you know you can get two 4T sleeves out of one Men's 4XXL sleeve?!?

To make the super hero symbols, I did a google image shirt and printed some out to make appliques. The Wonder Woman shirt is actually made from some iron-on gold glitter sheets that are in the tee embellishment section of JoAnn Fabrics. It looks awesome, but doesn't stay well on knit (though it does on woven). I won't be using it again, I just had this already from a past project.

The waist is some gold bias tape sewn on with a long straight stitch. Adding the tape takes some stretch out of the waist, but the shirt still goes on and off fine. The stars were painted on with fabric paint by hand.

Batman and Superman were made slightly different. For the two shirts I cut a strip of yellow knit and layered it on top of the bodice pieces using a long straight stitch to get the belt look. I did this before I sewed the pattern pieces together btw. The appliques were made by applying Heat and Bond to scraps of knit. Then for Batman I cut out the black pieces to iron onto the yellow, and for Superman I cut out the red to layer onto the yellow. I should've cut out the yellow to layer onto black for Batman, but oh well.

Batman also has a sewn in cape - which is just a rectangle of fabric that is gathered a bit on each side, then sewn into the shoulder seams. I left the edges of it raw (also did with all the skirt bottoms) since the knit won't fray.