No- Sew DIY First Birthday Onesies - Bow Tie and Suspenders

Here is a quick little post today about the easy and inexpensive birthday onesies I made for the boys to wear for their one year old pictures.  I bought all of my supplies from Hobby Lobby, with the exception of the ribbon.  The ribbon is leftover from their Christmas onesies I made and was purchased from JoAnn Fabric.  

craft store supplies for this project:

2 6-12 month onesies (12-18 months were too big for my boys)

one spool of black ribbon with white stitching

a small square of patterned quilting fabric or scrap fabric

one sheet of colored or patterned iron on fabric

no-sew adhesive or hot glue

If you are looking to save money, use the 40% off one item on the Hobby Lobby app on your phone and buy the supplies slowly.  My Hobby Lobby is close to my local grocery store, so every time I needed to go to the grocery store, I would also go to Hobby Lobby to get an item from my supply list.

Yesterday I posted a few pictures of our twin boys’ one year old photo session here. 

Today I want to post about the onesies that I made for the boys to wear for that photo session.

I made their first birthday onesies, with bow ties and suspenders, the same way I made their Christmas onesies. 

You can find my tutorial for the Christmas onesies here.

The only thing I did differently for the birthday onesies, was add a number one to the shirt.  To do this, I used one sheet of grey and white chevron iron on fabric. I made a number one pattern using Microsoft word with a large bold font, printing it on computer paper, cutting out the number one, tracing the number one onto the iron on fabric, cutting out the fabric and then ironing the cut out iron on fabric to the shirt according to the directions on the packaging.  

I also chose not to use the metal buckles for the birthday onesies, simply because the boys are bigger now and would have been tempted to try to pull the buckles off of the shirt.

Lastly, because my boys are bigger now than they were at Christmas, and it has become their very nature to destroy anything they can get their hands on, I found that hot glue was better than the heat-n-bond to get the suspenders to stick to the shirt.  For whatever reason, the heat-n-bond with the ribbon stuck to the shirt, but when little toddler hands tried to pull the ribbon off, the ribbon came off.  A quick fix with the hot glue gun, and it became toddler proof.  Again, this is a no-sew version and this really was just a photo prop for me.  If you are wanting something long term or are looking to create something to sell, then I recommend using a sewing machine and forgoing the no-sew version.  This mama is not a seamstress.  I'm just crafty, so the cheap and quick no-sew version worked just fine for me.

Overall, I was really happy with these onesies.  I thought they looked cute in the pictures.  With coupons, the estimated cost for both of the onesies was around $10, and considering these only got worn twice (once for pictures and once to church on their birthday) I really didn’t want to spend any more than that.   Similar onesies will sell for $30 a piece in some Etsy shops.  That really wasn't in my budget, so I made my own simple version for our pictures.  My only tip is to make sure you iron the number one high enough if you want to wear pants with the onesie.  After I was finished with this project, I realized that when the boys wore pants, the pants covered part of the number one.  Oops!  Oh well, pantless babies are still cute babies;)