Silhouette Portrait GIVEAWAY and a Hot Air Balloon Shirt!!

I am super giddy to share this hot air balloon tshirt with you! I have been waiting a loooong time to get my hands on a Silhouette cutting tool and I finally got my chance! Silhouette America gave me one of their awesome Cameo machines so that I can share projects and ideas with you! I’ve used other cutting machines over the years, but I was especially excited about the fabric-cutting capabilities of the Silhouette machines AND the flexibility with the design software. I am just scratching the surface here today – sharing my very first Silhouette project! If you don’t already have a machine, you have the chance to win a Silhouette Portrait at the end of today’s post – EXCITING!!!!

Setting up my new Silhouette was pretty simple. There was an instructional video that I watched once and then, when I started on my first project, I would say I figured out the software, purchased the hot air balloon and quote templates for 99 cents each, began and finished my entire project (including the stenciled design on the back of the shirt) within 2 hours. Not bad at all!!! So…to make a hot air balloon shirt….you can do a search for “hot air balloon” in the Silhouette library – you’ll get lots of options – I liked this vintage hot air balloon, with the fun flags! I loaded the template into the design window on my computer, and decided to separate the parts of the balloon amongst three different fabrics.

Using the fabric interfacing was pretty much identical to using a standard fusible web. You cut your piece of fabric, cut the interfacing a little smaller, iron it onto the back of the fabric, then peel off the paper and stick the fabric onto the Silhouette cutting mat. The machine cuts through the fabric so smoothly. At first I thought it didn’t cut because there were no pulls or snags or anything, but it actually cut it without a problem. The ONLY issue I had was when I was removing one of the hot air balloon overlays that had really thin lines. The lines were maybe only 1/16″wide and a couple of them tore. I went ahead and just matched them up when I ironed it down and no one will ever know. Once I had all the pieces cut, I simply centered the first piece on a tshirt and ironed it down. Then the next layer, and so on, as you can see in the pictures above. It turned out absolutely perfect! I’ll have to hand wash this shirt because I used the NO SEW interfacing that you don’t machine-stitch through, but the other type of interfacing CAN be machine-stitched. If you don’t want to do the machine-stitching on such a complex design, just wash it with caution or iron the design onto non-garment items.

On the back of the shirt, I couldn’t resist stenciling this cute quote – it’s one of my favorites and I thought it was so appropriate for this end of the school year season. I’ll save a tutorial for another time, but basically, I just slapped freezer paper down on my Silhouette cutting mat, expanded the size of the downloaded file within the Silhouette software on my computer, and cut it out. Then, I ironed the freezer paper stencil onto the shirt and painted with fabric paint. Peel off the freezer paper (carefully!) and there you have it!

If you would like to try using this special fabric interfacing to cut fabric with your Silhouette machine, there are some great deals available right now! You must go through my affiliate link to Silhouette America and use the code GIRLINSPIRED to take advantage of these great deals. And, the current deals are:

1. Fabric Bundle for $29.99 – 1 of each fabric interfacing, fabric blade, $25 Silhouette Online Store download card
2. Silhouette Portrait fabric bundle for $129.99 – Silhouette Portrait, 1 of each fabric interfacing, fabric blade, $25 Silhouette Online Store download card
3. Silhouette Cameo fabric bundle for $269.99 – Silhouette Cameo, 1 of each fabric interfacing, fabric blade, 12″x24″ cutting mat

And the fun doesn’t stop there, because today, I get to GIVE AWAY a Silhouette Portrait cutting tool to one of YOU!!! I’m really pretty excited about that because I kinda think these machines are awesome! This giveaway ends at midnight on May 27! Just wait for the rafflecopter to load and you can enter!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway