Fire Truck Birthday Shirt Embroidered for Landon

Today I spent my birthday playing with my birthday present -- my new embroidery machine.  I wanted to try doing a combination of appliqué and embroidering on the embroidery machine, and thought a t-shirt for Landon's 3rd birthday would be the perfect opportunity.  So I searched the internet and found a reasonably priced design at Stitcheroo Designs that incorporated the number 3 into a flame with a firetruck.

Here is the T-shirt I made:

Here's a closer look at the design:

The embroidery machine program file can be purchased here.   (The purchase actually includes the design for numbers 1 - 6!)

I also found this tutorial from the blog Love from Texas that walked me step by step through the applique embroidery process.

Lesson learned from this project is that I need to use a little stiffer stabilizer (like a medium weight cutaway) in place of the tear away stabilizer that I used on this project.  This would clean up the puckering that I got at the bottom of the t-shirt.

Considering it was my first appliqué project on the embroidery machine, I am quite pleased with the results.  I can't wait to surprise Landon with this birthday surprise tomorrow morning.