This past Saturday, we celebrated my cousin Erin’s baby shower. She and her husband will be welcoming their sweet baby daughter later this summer. They live in California, so it was such a treat to spend time together as a family and celebrate her over the weekend.
Erin is one of the biggest Dave Matthews Band fans I know. She was an early member of the Warehouse, has seen him dozens upon dozens of times live, and can even be seen in a photo with Boyd on the back cover of a DMB book (I’m pretty sure it’s Fan.Fare).
I had already ordered the diaper pail from her registry (girls are sugar and spice and everything nice but they also poop all of the time) and had it sent directly to her, but I wanted to have a little gift for her to open at the shower too. On Memorial Day, the lightbulb in my head went off and I thought, “hey, I bet there are DMB onesies out in the world.” I went on Etsy, and sure enough found an array of choices.
In addition to onesies with the fire dancer logo, there were such adorable ones with DMB lyrics, from songs like “So Much to Say” and “Everyday.”
Because I was working with a short timeframe, I purposely picked one that the seller said would be available to ship in time for the shower. When I didn’t receive any shipment updates, I contacted the seller on Thursday and found out there would be a delay. The seller was nice enough to offer to send the gift directly to my cousin or refund it all together.
I was disappointed that I wouldn’t get to see her open this gift in person at the party. That’s when I decided that I could probably make a DMB onesie on my own. In fact, why not try to make a few?
I went to Hobby Lobby a couple of days before the shower, knowing that they have a variety of plain clothing items and onesies meant for crafting. They had white onesies in a variety of sizes, so I decided to get three for different age ranges.
My handwriting isn’t great, so I was worried about trying to freehand the lyrics. It could get ugly really fast. I also looked over the iron-on letter options, but it seemed like it could take a long time and not have the finished look I was hoping for.
I ended up deciding on adhesive letter stencils and fabric paint daubers. I really liked using these particular stencils because the adhesive backing helped keep them in place. It took some trial and error, but the process went pretty smoothly. I made sure to use catalogs to make sure the paint didn’t bleed through.
I decided to use some of the lyrics on the Etsy printed onesies because they were perfect for a baby, but there were endless possibilities.
While the daubers seemed to make the most sense, I found that I was sometimes hard to get the paint on evenly. Next time, I might get a stubby stencil brush and paint. I also found that the consistency of the paint varied, so there were some instances of the black paint bleeding through.
After letting these dry for a day, I followed the directions to iron the underside of the fabric on high heat and then washed them inside out on a delicate cycle. They were all set and ready to go for the shower on Saturday.
I was so happy that Erin loved them and can’t wait to see photos of her little gal wearing them one day soon.
I’m now really inspired to make more of these for friends and family. I think there are so many opportunities, between song lyrics or movie quotes, to make something that is perfect for someone. And it was so fun and simple to do, I think anyone could try it.
Here are the items I used (these are affiliate links through the Amazon Associates program) :