Disney Mickey Ears Matching T-shirts: Step By Step Instructions

We just came from a Disney trip 12 years in the planning!  After seeing so many cute DIY Disney t's on Pinterest, I knew this was a project I HAD to do for our group.  But with 14 different personalities and favorite characters, I had to do more than just the standard black mouse ears on a t-shirt!

1.) I started by assigning each family group a color.  Easier said than done when you need to cover t-shirt sizes from youth x-small to adult x-large!  I ended up going with t's from our local Hobby Lobby.  They ran pretty true to size.  2.) I came home and pre-shrank the shirts using NO laundry detergent and NO fabric softener.  3.) I polled each person to get their top one or two favorite Disney characters and went to town shopping.  I bought 1/4 - 1/3 yard of each fabric.  you can get away with 1/4 yd on the little t's and also those that have a small fabric print where it easy to position your Cricut cut. 

4.) Using instructions from Melanie Brown's Courtney Lane creations blog, http://courtney-lane.blogspot.com/2011/07/cutting-fabric-with-cricut.html and my Mickey and Friends Cricut cartridge, I set about cutting out my ears.  By following Melanie's directions to a t (get it?), I had no problems.  For the smallest t-shirts (youth x-small), I cut my mickey ears out at 4".  For my young kids (youth medium size 8-10) I cut my Mickey's at 5".  For my youth large/x-large, I cut at 6".  For my regular adult med/large I cut Mickey ears at 8" and for the double XL's, 9".  I can't stress enough to follow Melanie's directions exactly!  You need the multi-cut to get all the threads of your fabric completely severed.  At that, I still had to snip some with my scissors.

5.) Once the ears were cut, it was time to position them on my t-shirt.  The key to making matching t's is to get your emblem to align at the same place on each shirt.  I started with my smallest shirt (shown above) and used the bottom of the sleeves as they attached to the bodice to align with the bottom of the Mickey ears.  To ensure I was vertically straight, I folded my t-shirt in half to find the line of symmetry and then ironed a straight line into the shirt.  Next, I folded my Mickey ears in half (wrong sides together) matching each half up exactly creating another line of symmetry.  I finger pressed in the my line of symmetry.  Finally, I overlapped my two lines of vertical symmetry on top of each other, using my sleeves as a guide for how high to put the ears on the shirt.  Following the directions on my Heat N Bond, I ironed the ears in place.

6.) You can stop here and be done, but I felt like the edges need some definition.  Using a zig zag stitch with a short width of stitch and a short length of stitch, I zig-zagged around the edges in a contrasting color of thread.

7.) I wanted just a little more pop, so I added some iron-on bling to a few spots on Minnie's dress and hair bows.  You could embellish in any number of ways!  I will show those in future posts.