Saturday, September 24, 2011

And Now One for Kayla

We are closing in on the pillowcase of the month club for my niece. I'm still missing her June pillowcase. I'll also have one extra so she'll have a baker's dozen when we are through. 
The font is the Pumpkin font from 8 Claws and a Paw.

Let's Play!

My nephews are getting too big I think to wear stuff that Auntie makes them. I thought this design from Applique Corner might work for Donovan. I was a little hesitant with it due to the font. A little young looking for him. I maybe should have edited that out and replace it with a different font. He likes the shirt so I'm ok with it I guess.

The t-shirt is actually brown. Get it, football brown. It looks black here but it really is brown. So we already know that I didn't want the t-shirt to be too babyish for him. Well using a quilting cotton for the applique wasn't going to cut it. I start to look around the sewing room. I spied a bag of faux leather and other upholstery fabric. I decided that faux white leather wasn't quite right. I then found some microfiber fabric. The right side of the fabric wasn't right either but the back or wrong side of the fabric was just right. It had this very rough texture to it. Nothing girly about that. It was a bit of a challenge to stitch through. My thread was shredding trying to get through it. I decided to try a different brand of white embroidery thread and that did the trick. Went onward without any problem. I did have to go back and manually satin stitch where the shredding occurred.

The other difficult thing about the fabric is that I think it took a toll on my small, curved, very sharp embroidery scissors. The fabric was very thick, really too thick for those little scissors. I had cut leather with them without a hitch. This time, I'm fearful I wasn't so lucky. I used them to cut thread yesterday and they were pretty dull. I don't have any idea how to sharpen these curved blades. I'll have to research this little dilemma.

Now One for Matthew

My family went down to Kansas City this past summer for my sister's big birthday shindig. The day we left, we stopped by my sister Karen's house to pick up daughter number three and say goodbye to daughter number one. They decided to stay at Karen's house because of 1. the beer, 2. the in ground swimming pool, 3. the beer.

My nephew Matthew has been growing vegetables this summer. Matty may be seven or eight. What can I say, too many kids in the family. He planted his huge garden and has been tending it. When we stopped by, he got a bag and sent us back to Wisconsin with potatoes, onions and cucumbers. We ate the potatoes up right away. Great job Matty! 
I knew that I wanted to make him something farming related. When I stopped by Hancock's, I saw that they had all of the John Deere fabric on sale. Yippee. We're in business. It took a little bit of time to find a simple font that would be similar to the font that the tractor company uses. The font is called Chachie and is available from 8 Claws and a Paw.

Didn't I Say I Wasn't Going to Do This Again?

I kind of remember me saying that I wasn't going to use this fabric again. Well here I am. I guess when you hit a clearance sale anything is possible. I struck it rich this summer with clearance fabrics from Hancock's. I can't even remember how much fabric I purchased. It was well over fifty yards. Most of the fabric I purchased for $1.00 a yard. That is correct. Can't pass that up. None of it was cheap (crummy) fabric. This satin charmeuse was one of the fabrics off the dollar table. I bought what was left on the bolt, five yards maybe.

This charmeuse was even more slippery than the last pillowcase I made for Ashton. I wouldn't have made this if she weren't my niece, my goddaughter and the fabric was ubber cheap. I got a message from her that she loves it. She loves silky, satiny bed linens.

The font is called Gracie and it's from Embrotique.

Pattern Shopping This Week

What a week it was for pattern sales. I only picked up a few patterns. The big deal this week was that both Joann Fabrics and Hancock Fabrics had Burda patterns on sale. I honestly can't think of a time when that has happened.

 I was in New York City over Labor Day weekend and I picked up a copy of Burda Style Magazine. That was on my "to purchase" list. I found it at my first stop. The magazine had a feature on Folkwear. I didn't really take the time to examine if these patterns are the same or different than what's in the magazine. They were on sale for $2.49 which is a great price so I picked them up anyway. This little girls dirndl is Burda 9509.
I'm not sure when I'll need a pattern for lederhosen but hey, one never knows. When you're German, you probably should have this in your pattern stash. This is Burda 9508.


 I already in my possession have a ladies dirndl pattern. One of these days, I'll blog about that. Like a said earlier, at $2.50 a pattern, didn't want to pass this pattern up. This pattern does have a wider range of sizes than my other pattern. This is Burda 7443.
I purchase a really pretty lime green chenille boucle at Paron Fabrics when I was in NYC. I think this is the perfect skirt for the fabric. Unfortunately, I bought all that was left on the bolt. I think I have enough for the skirt but not the jacket so I'll have to do some searching to find some complimentary fabric for the jacket.
Finally, this is McCall's 6274. I have some plans in the works for this one but you may not see it until next spring.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Using Vinyl in Machine Applique

The last few weeks I've been reading about people using "sports" vinyl for some of their embroidery designs. I decided that I really wanted to try this. As most people know, I do a lot of girl "things". I have a lot of nephews but I really don't make anything for them. With girls, the items I make can be girly. Girly is still good as you get older. With boys, I feel that pretty much after age 3, they wouldn't be caught dead with something their aunt made them. So I needed to find a design and materials to give some tshirts a little punch.

First up, was to go out and find myself some vinyl. I found two pieces at Hancock Fabrics on the back tables. One I bought for football appliques and the other looks like basketball material. That one is actually tablecloth vinyl. I really like the dimensional look that the vinyl gave these designs. There was no problem at all with my machine going thru the vinyl.

As far as the designs go, it took a bit of searching to find just the right ones. Once again, I didn't want anything babyish. I wanted the designs to show some action. I think I found the right ones.
 I found this design at Stitch on Time. I think they are based out of England. I think that the net with the ball is such a cool look. It looks better in person. The little fuzzies at the bottom are from the back of the vinyl. Remember that it's for a table so it's backed with flannel. Too bad I stitched this out late at night. I don't like the yellow. I guess it looked good at midnight!


This is the look that I really wanted but was not able to find it. It finally dawned on me to check a site that I knew had lots of designs but I had never ordered from. The basketball applique is from Planet Applique. This design on it's own would have never worked with a plain cotton but with the vinyl, it really would be ok for just the basketball alone. The basketball player silhouette is from Stitch on Time. That really pulled the whole look together. I just stacked one design on top of another and away I went.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Little Mummy Girl

I saw this design when Applique Corner first introduced it and thought it would be super cute for my little niece. Well today was the day for the stitch out. Let me tell you, it is a lengthy project. I have a "home" embroidery machine, not a multi-needle machine. It would have been far easier on a multi-needle.

When I embroider knit tops or onsies, I turn them inside out then spray baste them to my hooped stabilizer. I can't tell you the difficulty in trying to place these little 1/2 inch strips on the design while the shirt is inside out. I used a little bit o Scotch tape to hold some of the strips. I would have loved to have taken pictures of the process but that certainly would have increase the time in the studio today.

Don't you like her shoes? Every Halloween diva needs a pair of snakeskin shoes, don't you think! I know our little diva would like them!
 I do like the little shirt now that it's done. I wasn't so sure about it during the middle of the process. Let's hope my niece likes it as much as I do.

Bad to the Bone

Sometimes boys can be a little bit of a challenge to make things for. A few weeks ago, Five Star Fonts came out with this design. I really liked it. Before I plunked down the cash, I sent the link to my sister to see if my nephew would like it. She enthusiastically said he would. So all I needed was to find a black t-shirt, then I was in business.

The shirt will be shipped off to my nephew Donovan or DJ as his mother calls him. And yes, he is bad to the bone but he's adorable and we love him.