American Girl doll shirt and shorts

When I made this outfit, which I showed you before...

... I had plans to make a pair of shorts to go with it. And here they are:

Courtney now has the rest of the outfit at home, but I just couldn't let Kit model the shorts with her mauvish-lavenderish sweater, so I made a little shirt for her to wear, too. The blues don't match, but that's okay because it's not really a part of that outfit. It's a shirt for HER, finally. And I have a pair of pants cut out for her to wear with the shirt. So she'll finally have some new clothes of her own!

I enjoyed embellishing the shirt with this little applique:

Wanna hear my thought processes that brought about the applique? Of course you do! Ha. Well, you're gonna, anyway. ;)

1. Hmmm... that shirt's gonna look awfully plain. But plain T-shirts are okay. But somebody said in the comments that the embellishments make the outfit. What could I add?
2. Not the same stitching I put on this shirt. Maybe an applique. What fabrics do I have that might work? I have something with balloons on it... let me go check.
3. Yes! This'll work great!
4. I'll cut it in the shape of a balloon! Of course I must have the little girl included on it.
5. I'll do pink stitching around it. No, wait! The balloons are outlined in brown... I'll stitch it on with brown! And stitch a brown string onto the bottom!
6. Yay! Perfect! The pants I'm making are dark brown!!
7. The colors in the applique even make it match the shorts a little bit! Hurray!

So there ya have it... how I went from a plain blue shirt to an appliqued one that matches not only the shorts of another outfit (well, sorta), but also the pants that are yet to be made.

I used my double needle to stitch the hems on the bottom and the sleeves, which you can see if you look really closely. It gives that little dolly shirt a more professional look! Incidentally, the blue knit fabric is leftover from a little jumper I made for Jess when she was maybe 2 years old. :) It was pretty cute, too, and sported its own applique of some sort, if I remember right. If I weren't so lazy tired, I'd dig up a photo of it and show you. Maybe later when I show you the pants that go with this shirt.