A special Valentine for my little cupcake...

I am soooo excited to share this little project with you! It turned out almost as good as I hoped, and it was really quick and easy! So here's my special Valentine for my little girl...

She got a little kitchen for Christmas (it's the Little Tykes cupcake kitchen). We also bought her a small food set (the kind that has velcro and you can "cut" apart), and my husband made her a little table. Well, I thought my tiny chef could use an apron to wear while she's whipping up something to eat. She's almost 18 months, and she likes to dress up and she already knows to put the plates on the table, and put her cupcakes on the plates. It's ridiculously cute!

Ready to make your own? You're gonna die at how easy this is...

First off, I didn't make the apron; I found it at Hobby Lobby ($2) in the aisle where they have plain bags and shirts and onesies. For the price, it was totally worth just buying it. You can also get it 40 percent off with their coupon, so super good price! If you wanted to make one, it wouldn't be hard; but I'll save that for a later tutorial. :)

I really love B's clothes that have little letters or flowers sewn on them, so I thought I would do the same with the cupcake. At first I tried to draw my own outline, but I'm not much of an artist. So I found some clip art online to give me my cupcake outline. (The heart came from the clipart in Microsoft Word.)

I cut the pieces apart, then I pinned them to my cupcake fabric. I already had some white and pink knit on hand, and you need such a small amount, this is the perfect time to use up some scraps. You could use whatever scraps you wanted, but I picked knit because it doesn't fray and unravel.

Now, when you cut these out, make sure to leave about 1/4 inch extra around the edge. You're going to use the edge of your paper pieces to make your sewing lines and you want some extra fabric...

Next, take your fabric marker -- make sure it's water dissolvable or air dissolvable -- and mark around the edges of your pieces. This is where you will sew. Then I put the fabric on top of my clipart and traced the inside lines.

Once you've got your pattern on your piece, place it on your apron and carefully smooth it out without stretching it. Pin it in place and then get sewing on those lines! Make sure to start with whatever piece needs to be underneath, in this case the cupcake liner.

I started by stitching the outline to get the edges tacked down, then I went back and did the lines in the middle, making sure to backstitch at the beginning and the end. (This shot is from the back so you can more easily see my stitching.)

And here's a little note that will make this a little easier and look better: Because my apron is a twill or light canvas and doesn't stretch, and my knit is really stretchy, it's easy for the knit to get bunched up. The way to avoid this is to not just move the fabric around curves like you normally would. When you need to adjust the angle at which you're sewing, lift your presser foot and readjust the fabric. It was the presser foot that bunched up my knit, so if you lift your presser foot any time the fabric looks like it's stretching or you need to curve your line, it will look much better.

Of course, I figured this out on the frosting part, so I have a little bunching on the cupcake lining. Go figure. :) This technique also helped me get my lines just right. On parts of this and especially on the heart, I basically sewed one stitch at a time, lifting my presser foot and adjusting my fabric after every stitch. A little labor intensive, but I was so happy that my heart looked like a heart!

My fabric marker is water soluable, so I got the corner of a washcloth wet and dabbed my fabric; the blue lines came right off (thank goodness! This was the first time I had used it and I didn't test it first, haha...).

I also wanted to write B's nickname, sugar baby, below (it fit so well with the cupcake, too). My first idea was to use my new sewing machine to sew it on; it came with three fonts. But I think I'm still a little intimidated to try that -- I was afraid I wouldn't like it and it would mess up my project -- plus I wasn't crazy about the font styles with this particular project.

So after my failure with my son's shirt, I was thinking this was the perfect time to learn how to use fabric paint (which is what I should have used for his project). So I picked up a small thing of white fabric paint at Michael's ($2). I looked at their stencils, and they were too big/wrong font for what I wanted, so I decided to stamp the letters on -- easier, faster and I already had several alphabet sets on hand.

I put a little blob on my plate and smeared some on my foam brush. You really need just a tiny bit! I also counted out how many letters and figured I needed the center line to be between the r in sugar and the space before the second word. I started with the second word, then did the first word, working backwards, to place my letters just right. Now, if you use clear stamps, it will be that much easier because then you can see exactly where you're putting them. And no worries! This won't ruin your stamps; the fabric paint came right off when I rinsed them in water.

Notice my b and a are a little weird looking? That's where I started; after that, I made sure to stamp it once on the plate before putting it on the fabric. I think I had too much paint on there and that's why it blobbed a little. It turned out much better if I stamped it once -- lightly -- before stamping the fabric.

I let it dry overnight, then presented it to the little lady for her approval (and get some pictures, of course).

I feel like this is taking longer to explain than to actually do. :) I love the way it turned out, especially since I hadn't really done stuff like this before. I loved the fabric paint; I'll probably add some fancy sprinkles to the frosting with some pink fabric paint, too.

Happy Valentine's Day from me and my sugar baby!