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.

My Sister's Birthday

My youngest sister Jodi just turned 40. My brother-in-law Scott informed me that he would be having a blowout for her birthday. The invitation stated "No Gifts" but I couldn't pay attention to that since this was my sister's party. I had to put on my thinking cap and try to figure out something different and something useful.

Jodi had mentioned in the past that I should make a family crest. I haven't learned how to digitize (taking a piece of art and converting it to embroidery stitches).  So that didn't sound likely. However, one of the fella's at Sew Forum started to digitize family crests. That's Tom's specialty. I decided to email him and inquire about commissioning him to digitize the Kennedy family crest. I sent Tom a couple of examples. He told me that he doesn't like to look at other art due to copyright infringement issues. But what he does is to read the information on the family and the crest and come up with his interpretation of the design. So in a matter of a couple of days. Tom sent me the artwork to approve and I had my embroidery file in about 24 hours after my approval. The good thing is that I now have the design and can use it for so many things.

So, the gift was starting to take on an Irish theme. I already have lot's of Irish and Celtic designs in my possession so I didn't need to purchase any. I opted to make a few bar mop towels with these Celtic knotwork designs from Embroidery Library. They stitch up pretty quick since there aren't too many thread changes.

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you may have seen a couple of pictures of casserole carriers. People really like them. I did a similar theme for my friends Yvonne and Tim for their 25th wedding anniversary. I swore I would never do another one again. It literally took hours to stitch out. Well, I must have softened somewhat to do this for Jodi. Job one is finding two placemats in the color that you want. The placemats have to be large enough. They tend to shrink so I have to be careful and read the dimensions before washing. I found these at Kohl's and they did shrink a little more than I would have liked.

I liked the Claddagh design that I used on Yvonne's. That came from Embroidery Library. I decided to try a different design for the border. I had to buy four designs before I settled on the right one. I bought three designs that were too large. I had over two hours just in computer work getting this to look like I wanted it too and to fit the embroidery hoop.

Apparently, I had difficulty getting this centered in my hoop. I say apparently because as far as I know, it was centered. Most of what I do is called the "hoopless" technique. I hoop my stabilizer then use KK2000, an adhesive spray and either pin or baste stitch my item to the stabilizer. I don't put it into the middle of the hoop. With thick towels and placemats, it's near impossible anyway. I tried to hoop but the hoop kept coming undone. My placemat was marked. My stabilizer was marked. All my registration lines were matching but the design became off center anyway. There was no way I was going to start over or try to rip out all the threads so I just left it and gave it too her.

Embroidery project from hell finished. Really, I'm not going to make another one, ever.

Come on. Really, That's IT?

Did I add correctly? I felt really good about crossing a couple of things off my to-do list.

So I decided to count them. If you look on the right hand side bar, you'll see my list of eighteen projects that I want to get finished by the end of the year. How many have been completed in 6.5 months? Only six. Yup, not as many as I thought. I guess I need to buckle down and try to work on this list instead of all the other projects floating around in my brain.

                                             I've been trying to stay focused.

                                                        

                                                       I've been sewing with my friends.

               

                                                               I sew when I'm at quilt camp.

                                                              

                                                                  I sew when I'm alone.

                                                      

                                                            I try to sew in the morning.

                                                 

                                                       I try to do a little sewing at night.

                                                       Will I be able to finish my list?

                                       I guess I just need to keep plugging away.            

Finally, a Finished Quilt

It's been a while since I've finished a quilt. I haven't been quilting as much lately for a number of reasons. 1) it's not a project that I can finish in a day. 2) how many quilts do I need? 3) takes a little bit of muscle power to machine quilt. 4) loving the garment construction right now. 5) something funky is going on with my machine. I think the thread is hooking onto my feed dogs and breaking. So it needs to be adjusted. 6) not a cheap hobby. I guess that's enough reasons for now.

I started this quilt almost two years ago I think. It was one of Lauren's Christmas presents. The great thing about the fabrics all came from stash with the exception of the backing. The pattern is called Star Cakes from Legacy Patterns. Easy to put together. My original plan was to free motion a bridal wreath pattern all over. This is the stencil that I have.

I chickened out though. With my machine not liking free motion right now, I wasn't up for the battle of fighting the thread breaking. So I opted to cross hatch the quilt. I've never met a cross-hatched quilt that I didn't like. Certainly, it's a familiar pattern that we've all seen on old quilts. On this type of quilt, you really can't go wrong with that pattern. My motto, done is better than not done. So I have a done quilt. Maybe not what I had originally hoped but finished non-the-less and crossed off my to-do list. Ah, that feels good.

Girl's Reversible Top

This is the second pattern that I've made from Tie Dye Diva. I was pretty excited to make it. I wasn't going to add any machine embroidery to it. Just get it done. Well that didn't happen. I decided to put some appliques on it. The cherry design is from Lynnie Pinnie and the font is from Planet Applique.

The top was pretty easy to make. Very little hand sewing. There are buttons on both sides of the top. I got all the fabrics on clearance. So I think the top maybe was about $1 and the pants were in the neighborhood of a bout $1. Pretty decent price for an outfit. But that's not all. I hit the $2 tank top sale at Old Navy a couple of weeks ago and found one tank top in Kayla's size. So the cool thing is that she actually has three looks to wear with the pants.Forgive the white streak going down the shirt, I haven't washed the tailor's chalk off of it yet.

One thing that I tried with the pattern is the use of bridal loops. The pattern called for 1/8" elastic. Somehow the thought popped into my head that I should try bridal loops for a neater look. I have a huge container that is full of bridal laces. I was sure I had loops in there. Well I did find some. I only had about a 5 inch piece but certainly enough for this project. The important thing is to make sure that the tape is well inside your 1/2 inch seam allowance. I used 1/2 inch buttons and they work, however, I think using a slightly smaller button would be better like a 3/8" button.

Wild Kingdom Part 2

The pink and brown leopard fabric was purchased on clearance at Joann's. I saw this fa fabric and thought of pajamas for my niece Kayla. I didn't have a pattern in mind when I purchased it so I bought a couple of yards. Her older sister Ashton spotted it in my sewing room and requested a pillowcase to be made out of it. I posted Ashton's pillowcase in a previous blog article. Fortunately, I was able to make both the pillowcase and the intended pajamas.


The pattern I used was Butterick 4910. I would say it went together quickly. At the last minute, I decided to add a little bit of embroidery and the ruffle. The little heart was a free embroidery design from GG Designs Embroidery out of Australia.