Are We There Yet?

My daughter Whitney actually put the bug in my ear for this theme. This is Kayla's August pillowcase. Whitney had come across this blog article for a road trip pillowcase. I really liked the idea. I'll eventually make one of those for Kayla but I wanted to do the road trip theme for a summer pillowcase. After a little poking around on the internet, I found this fabric from Maywood Studios. This fabric was stuck in my brain which was unfortunate. I'd like to buy local but couldn't find anything that fit my theme. With shipping, I spent $25 for one pillowcase. Yikes! I'm going to try to refrain from doing that again. Lucky for me, I only have three months left on my Pillowcase of the Month Club. I have the June and October fabric. I just need the September fabric.

As with most of my sewing and embroidery projects, I spend way too much time researching. I have over 500 embroidery fonts and I tried to find a font that matched. I didn't have anything that matched so then I went searching True Type Fonts on the internet that I could pull into my software. I found one that was just about a perfect match for the script on the fabric. After putting it through my embroidery software, I wasn't happy with the quality. I don't have manual digitizing, just auto digitizing and a lot of times, that doesn't produce a great product. So I went back thru my fonts and decided to use the Cartoon Me font from 8CAAP.

 I guess my reality wasn't as great as my vision. I auditioned lots of embroidery threads and decided on the beige-y yellow color. That was a mistake. I put browns and reds up to the blue fabric and didn't like it. I put black up to the thread and didn't like it. Oh well.

Wild Kingdom Pillowcase

Does everyone know about Wild Kingdom? My dad watched that every week. Now, I'm kind of old. Way back then, we had one tv and four channels. Television was pretty boring and there was nothing worse than having my dad watch Wild Kingdom AND Lawrence Welk. I didn't give him any crap about it. He worked hard during the week. Anyway, this pillowcase takes us to the savannah. I have three different fabrics and prints.

I had some the silky leopard fabric in my sewing room. My niece Ashton is spending the summer with us. She came into my sewing room and commented that she wanted a pillowcase out of the fabric. Lucky for her, I bought plenty. I actually bought it to make a little pajama set for her little sister.

I can't say this was fun. It went together quick. But your probably shouldn't use stretchy, silky fabric for a pillowcase. If you're up for the challenge, just make sure you have plenty of pins to keep it stable.

The font I used is one of my favorites. It's Harrington from 8 Claws and a Paw.

The Mouse Dress

A year or two ago, one of the gals over at Sew Forum made this delightful little Minnie Mouse dress. I loved what she did and I totally copied it! My girls are all grown and I can't say that I'm around little ones too much so I copied her dress since I have no idea what Minnie wears anymore. I used my favorite pattern, Claire, from Portobellapixie.  The red and white polka dot fabric came from Joann's and the white and black fabric are Kona cotton. I hope Kayla love this dress as much as I do. I'll be going to visit her soon, so I'm hoping she'll model this for me.       

Late for the Owl Party

 Of course I'm late. My family and friends can vouch that I'm late for everything. The owl party is no different. Let's see, owl's were in the last two to three years. I'm finally getting around to doing an outfit. The fabric for the skirt came from Hobby Lobby. I picked up the skirt pattern from Jacqi's hop (Keep Me In Stitches) here in Appleton. The pattern is Addie Jo from Izzy & Ivy. It's a fairly quick skirt to put together. The bow goes is worn in the back. The little pink top I picked up at a thrift store. Brand new, still had the original sales tag on it. Sometimes I get lucky.  The little sleepy owl design come from Applique Cafe.

Now, what other party am I late for?

Pillowcase of the Month Club Continues

These pillowcases have been done for a while. I just need to get back into the habit of writing a blog article. These are the May and July pillowcases. No, I haven't started the June pillowcase yet even though June is just about finished.

The May pillowcase fabric came from Hancock's. The font is Summer Time from 8 Claws and a Paw.

The fabric for the 4th of July pillowcase is from the M'Liss Celebrate USA collection. Kayla name was made with two different fonts. The large letter K is from Embroidery Library and her name is made with the Santa's Sleigh font from Jolson's Designs.

Where's my sewing Mojo?

I seem to have lost my sewing mojo. It happens every spring. There is so much sewing that takes place around the holidays. Last year, I had the wedding then we moved right into the holidays. Come January, I don't want to touch my machine. There's a double edge sword here. My sewing room is a mess. I don't want to sew in it but the only way to clean it out is to get busy and sew up some fabrics. There's way too much on the floor.

I also haven't been good about getting some blog articles written. Let's see, new computer and Windows 2010. It took a while to figure out pictures resizing with the new Windows. Oh wait, I can't use Windows for that now.  Really, is this an improvement? Finally, after researching, I found a program that will resize my pictures. I'm also not liking the whole downloading to a file. I guess I need to get over it and keep working getting used to this. I signed up for a blogging class at the local technical school. Wouldn't you know, there wasn't that many people interested in learning how to blog so my class was canceled. I've been blogging for two years now. Yeah, I know the basics. What I need help with is editing in Blogger and getting rid of the great big white spaces that occur sometimes. I thought the new upgrade to Blogger was suppose to make editing easier.  I spend way too much time trying to make the article look nice. It makes me not want to blog due to the time involved. I will work on researching how to better edit so I can stay on top of this.

Enough of my complaining. Here are a few things that I made for Kayla. For the Easter pillowcase, I used the Jelly Bean Rick Rack font from Five Star Fonts. The ice cream cone applique is from Digistitches and the little ice cream hair clippie is from GG Designs Embroidery.

Now the dog coat. I cut this darn coat out a long time ago. So long ago, that I'm refusing to tell you the exact length of time. Good thing I cut it out a size (or two) larger than what she needed at the time. I didn't feel like sewing it up. It actually went together pretty easily. I guess I didn't feel like working with polar fleece. The pattern that I used is McCall's 4961. I decided to use decorative buttons instead of doing any machine embroidery on it.

Here's hoping that I get my mojo back.

Fabric Dyeing

Have you ever said never? I have. Plenty of times. Let's see. I never want to learn: smocking, hand applique, how to make makeup, whole cloth quilting, fabric dyeing, art quilting. I know there are other things I'm forgetting. Why don't we want to learn new things? For me, it's about the level of perceived difficulty with fear of failure thrown in there. Last month, I scratched another skill off that list.

My friend Pat had taken up fabric dyeing a few years ago. When she first mentioned it, I knew it was something I would never ever want to do. Pat would always show what she was up to. Yes, it was always fun to look at what she did but just not my cup of tea. What was it that made me change my mind? It was a scarf. A few years ago, Pat gave me the most beautiful green silk scarf for Christmas. I had gotten so many compliments on that scarf. I loved the subtle shades differences in that scarf. Sadly, I lost the scarf a few months ago. I wore it to a football game and somehow, I went home without it. It wasn't the fact that I lost it but the idea that maybe I could learn how to create something that beautiful.

Last year, Pat gave Taylor and I an invitation to hang out with her while she worked with the dyes. Between all of our schedules, it didn't work out. In addition, the temperature needs to be above 70 degrees for the needed chemical reaction to take place. I was also a little fearful of showing my lacking color skills. Lucky for me, an opportunity came up. The local community college has a sewing and quilting expo every year. Last year, I spent a day going to lectures focusing on garment sewing. This year, I took a day long class in fabric dyeing. Of course, I always seem to be put with a group of over-achievers. The gals at my table were fiber artists and they all had business cards. My classmates all had certain colors in mind or patterns. Me, I didn't want any tie-dyed patterns. I wanted mottled colors. Maybe in the future, my dyeing and quilting will become more adventurous. I was happy with my first try though.

I was very tired at the end of the day but excited practice my new skill. I'm hoping in the next month or so, the weather here in Wisconsin will be warm enough so I can play.