Full Time Frugal : DIY gift for Grandpa- $0

It's my dads birthday on Saturday. Since it is Monday today and I have a DIY no cost gift already completed some of you might be tempted to think I am an organized sort of person who planned ahead. Allow me, gentle readers, to set the record straight.

What happened was that when I was filling in our calendar for August (on August 2nd because I really was behind the ball already) I wrote in my dads birthday for the 10th. For some reason eight days felt like a ton of time to think up and execute a gift for dear dad. Then on Saturday it occurred to me that when I factor in postage times I actually only had until SUNDAY to think of and execute a gift....

I started hunting around for some ideas and I came upon a handkerchief That Guy was given as a groomsman gift in a wedding he was in some time ago. It got the idea wheels turning in my head. I could make my dad a handkerchief. Better still is how light and easy to mail it would be.
Back when I first became a mother it quickly became clear that gifts from me were no longer a big deal for my parents or my in laws. What they wanted was something from or about the kids. So I thought I would customize the handkerchief from the kids just for grandpa.

My gift worked out to be $0 because I had all materials on hand.
Here is what you would need:
a 12x12 inch square of white broadcloth (I used two squares because the gift was from two children)
washable marker
embroidery floss and needle
bias tape
straight pins
sewing machine (you could hand stitch this but my hand stitching is so terrible I would rather pull out my machine for the three seconds of sewing)

First I pulled out a sheet of white printer paper and folded it in quarters. Then I told the kids to draw Grandpa a picture that had to fit inside on of the quarters. These were the results:

Walter, age 4

Audrey, age 23 months

Next I cut two 12x12 inch squares from some white broadcloth fabric I had leftover from making this wedding gift.

What do you mean the edges are not perfectly straight? I have no idea what you're talking about...

Then, using washable marker, I traced the kids art onto the fabric.

images on fabric

Using embroidery floss in colors that matched the markers the kids chose I embroidered their designs right over the marker image. This will take about 10-15 minutes depending on the difficulty of the image. Audrey's scribble was much harder to do than Walters truck. This is the biggest time commitment if the whole project. After that was done I washed out the marker.

Audreys scribble embroidered

Walters truck embroidered

I had the kids choose out which color bias tape they wanted me to use from my stash. Bright always wins with this crowd :) Pin it in place with your straight pins.