Hockey Pillowcase

My little great nephew is a hockey fiend. I made this for him last year. I absolutely adore the referee fabric. It's from Robert Kaufman and the line is called Sports Life. Unfortunately, I can't tell you anything about the helmet fabric. The font is Tinker Toy.

Hockey Towel

This is one of my favorite towels. The design is from Luna Stitches. She has a lot of helmet and hat designs. I sent her a message asking if a goalie mask would be possible. This is what she came up with. You can find her site at http://lunastitches.com/category/new.htm.

The font is Tangerine from Trendy Stitches.

Kayla Couture Sports Bracelets

My sweet southern friend Cassie of East Coast Applique digitized several sports bracelets. She has them in several sports and also a blank bracelet. The bracelets also come in both adult and child sizes in one download. I've only made these two but I have some thoughts up my sleeve for some more. You can find Cassie's designs here. http://www.eastcoastapplique.com/shop.html Cassie has a lot of unique and easy in-the-hoop designs.

Another cool thing about the bracelets is that Cassie has files for vinyl/leather and for fabric. The pink bracelet is made out of fabric. The soccer bracelet is made out of marine vinyl. You can find remnants of vinyl at Joann's. The bracelets are great for sport's moms. You could put your child's jersey number on the bracelet.

Lemon Bleaching

I'm back! Wow, last year was a ride. My mother's dementia caused her swallowing reflexes to quit working. My sister took her to the ER and she died two weeks later. My mother-in-law was diagnosed in November with lung cancer and passed two days after Thanksgiving. Two weeks later, my oldest daughter gets engaged. That's the major events in a nutshell then combine that with everyday life. I need to get back on track stitching and writing.

This was an experiment that I did over the summer. I wanted a faded, worn-out, shirt for my Kayla. I did some research and first soaked the shirt in a salt bath for three days to soften the t-shirt. The t-shirt was a high quality shirt that I purchased at the Jansport outlet store here in town. After soaking in the salt mixture, I then soaked the shirt in a lemon-water bath. I laid it out in the driveway for a couple of hours. You can see in the picture that the shirt did fade, just not as much as I had wished. Another interesting detail is that I used old t-shirts for the soccer ball applique. The shirts were soccer shirts of two of my girls, Kayla's cousins.

The design is from a friend of mine. It's East Coast Applique and Cassie has some great things over on her Facebook shop. When I saw her split sports ball designs, I knew I had to get the soccer design for my niece. I believe the applique font is from Hang to Dry.

 

Kayla's name was balanced however with the last letter, the 'A', it looks off center. What I should have done was too move her name over a smidge to the rights. It would have been off-center but visually, it would have looked better. 

Kayla Couture Soccer Wear

I thought I'd take Kayla's brand and use it for some soccer clothing for her. I was so excited about the soccer shirts. I'm really happy with how the pink soccer ball turned out. The soccer ball design is from Applique Cafe. The font that I use for her brand is Just Another Serif from 8 Claws and a Paw.

This soccer stick girl is from Designs by Juju. I love the stick figures. I don't use them as much as I used to. I need to change that. They are such cute designs. 

Reverse Applique

This shirt is for my coworker Cindy. She did a very nice thing and thought of me when someone handed her a boatload of leather. She thought of me first and asked if I wanted it. Who could say no to that! I've only made a couple of things so far, two Kindle covers. I also used leather for one or two football appliques. I'm hoping that the leather will be put to good use in 2012. I have some ideas fermenting.

Back to the shirt, the soccer applique is from Starbird Stock Designs. It's called a reverse applique because you put the applique fabric on the bottom and cut away the top part of the shirt. "Normal" applique involves putting the fabric on top of your shirt. This was the first time that I tried the reverse applique method. The font is Jester from 8CAAP.

Basketball Items for Luke

For some reason, I love designs that have flames shooting out of them. I found this basketball design at Bows and Clothes. The design called for the use of two fabrics for the flames. I had flame fabric on hand and decided to try that instead of a plain red and a plain orange or yellow. The font is Clarence that came with my 4D Extra software.

 

I saw this basketball fabric at Jacqi's shop. Gosh, I wish they would quit coming out with such beautiful novelty fabrics. I could work on other items besides pillowcases. At least they're a quick project. For those of you who follow my blog, the banding fabric is the same that I used on Whitney and Joshua's beer pillowcases last year. I love that fabric. I thought the same fabrics would work with the basketball fabric. 

 The font is also the same as I used for the beer pillowcases. It's "Pharmacy" by Jolson's.

Are You Ready for Some Football?

A couple of months ago I was in Target scouring the clearance sections. I found a nice yellow polo shirt for my nephew Braden. I sent my sister a message asking her if he would like a football design. I sent her the link to this football design. She said, send the shirt but no design. Ok, he's in eighth grade. My feelings weren't hurt. Well after the polo shirt arrived, she told Braden I wanted to put a football design on the shirt. Well wouldn't you know he liked the idea. These may be the last things I make for him. He's at an age where I don't think he'll want any more. I guess there's just too much competition for his t-shirt attention and auntie loses.

The football design came from AK Designs. The design came in several sizes and I decided to go with the largest. I then did a search for football sayings. I really wanted to use a Vince Lombardi saying but I can only fit so much into the embroidery hoop. So I kept on trucking. I finally found this saying and decided it might fit and it was a decent saying for his shirt. Now, once again the difficult challenge of finding the perfect font for an eighth grade boy. I ended up using the font called Diner from 8CAAP.

 I bought this cave art football design last month from Embroidery Library and finally tried it out. I love this design. I think it's fun. I hope Braden thinks so.

Football Mom

My sister Jodi is a football mom. Both her boys play football. I saw this design and fell in love with it. I've seen other designs but liked this one enough to purchase it. The design is from Katelyn's Kreative Stitches. It took a while for the machine to stitch it out. I did this late one night and was dozing at the machine. I'm crossing my fingers that it fits her.

Basketball Again!

I used both of these basketball designs last month. This time, I used the "real" basketball vinyl that I found on the Joann's clearance shelf. The new vinyl certainly a more authentic look. However, the last basketball t-shirts I used a flannel backed tablecloth vinyl. I think it still had the look of a basketball and it was easier to stitch on. The new vinyl that I purchased has little bumps on it, just like a basketball, but it's more difficult to get coverage.

I made these shirts for my nephew Donovan.

Here is a side by side comparison of the two fabrics. The true basketball vinyl is on the right. I think I have almost a yard of this stuff. That should last me for quite some time seeing you only need between three and five inches for an applique!

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.

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.

Vrooooom!

My little nephew Connor is a car fiend. He's been this way since maybe crawling stage. I envision that this little guy will become an auto engineer. He has the brain of an engineer and the career runs in the family. The problem that I have with making things for Connor is that everything seems so babyish for him. Like I said, his brain is in engineering school right now even though he's only six. I hope he likes the shirt. The flame fabric for the helmet is the same that I used on his pillowcase. I need to make it a point when I go fabric shopping next to really make an effort to buy decent hair fabric. Connor has red hair. I can't just slap on red fabric and call it a day. I went with a light brown and that didn't quite do the trick. The applique is from Planet Applique.

This next shirt is a toile design from Embroidery Library. I just love all their toile designs. I purchased the shirt on clearance from Target. I was pretty sure I could find a design that would work with the stripe. I wish the design was a little bit larger but oh well. That's the largest it came in. The great thing about toile designs is that there is only one color so no constant thread changes.

I have been wanting to do a pillowcase for Connor for some time now. I figure it was hard to go wrong with that one. The fabric is from Alexander Henry, at least the giant car print was. I found that while shopping at Nancy's Notions one weekend. The black and white racing fabric came from Hobby Lobby. The font is Heavy Heap. I couldn't find a purchased font and I tried to do the auto digitize the font in my software but it didn't look very pretty. One of the gals over at Sew Forum was gracious enough to digitize it for me. Heavy Heap is the font used for Mattel's Hot Wheels products.

Is this a crazy mix of prints or what? I hope the little guy likes it.

Let's Play Ball!

I do so many girl things that sometimes it's fun to do some things for boys. My problem is that sometimes the boy embroidery designs may be a little babyish. I'm taking a chance on some things for my nephews. I figure if it's too babyish, hopefully they'll at least wear them to bed!
I love how this shirt turned out. Too bad my camera skills need improving. The color of the t-shirt is actually a bright, bold yellow. I really like the colors. The design from Applique Cafe. The font is Kindergarten from 8CAAP. Instead of using fabric for the football applique, I used a piece of leather. I really like how it turned out.

The next design came from Embroidery Library. I really like this design also. Very traditional and can be used for any age group. I have been doing so many applique designs, I somehow lost my brain when doing a regular embroidery design. This design has about 25,000 stitches. I really needed to beef up the stabilizer but totally didn't do it. So there is a little bit of puckering and the design did curl coming out of the dryer. My sister-in-law will just have to touch it up with the iron unfortunately.

The final design comes from Planet Applique, a cut little baseball player. The baseball cap had a gold star on it but I skipped over that part and decided to put Luke's name on the cap. The font is Roman I think and it came from my software. I didn't want to merge the lettering with the design so I had to came back and do the lettering as a separate design. As hard as I tried, I just couldn't get my centering correct.