Another First Birthday outfit

Rachel enjoyed having a special first birthday shirt for Tre to wear at his party, so she asked me to make something special for her little friend Kate whose first birthday party is today.

Kate's party is a farm theme. I sent Rachel a link to some cute farm designs I have, but we couldn't figure out how to incorporate the fact that it was her first birthday into those designs. So I told her what I was doing for Ada. She liked that idea and we decided to look for some farm-themed fabric for the applique.

Most of the farm prints I found had a motif that was too large to fit in the "1". I bought the cow print thinking it was pretty cute. Rachel agreed, but wasn't sure what color shirt to use, since we wanted to use red for her name.

This is where J.J. (her husband) steps in on the scene. He thought it would really be cute to put the cow print 1 and red-lettered Kate on the front of a pair of overalls. I thought denim was a perfect solution for the background of our design!

It is very hard to find little girl denim items that do not already have embroidery on it. I stopped by our local used clothing boutique and was thrilled to find this Old Navy jumper with no embroidery!

The plan: take off the pocket, embroider the design, and ta-da! Adorable outfit super quick.

Uhhhhhh... not so much. Look what I found when I took the pocket off:

I guess all the fading took place after the jumper was constructed. Now it was going to be WAY obvious that a pocket had been there. So I emailed Rachel with my bad news that this jumper wasn't going to work and we needed a new plan. (We are now down to under a week left before the big party).

Creative J.J. saves the day again. He suggested stitching the design on some suede and appliqueing that onto the jumper, covering the whole top panel. I thought that was yet again another great idea. Rachel bought the suede and I got to work. Here's the final product, and I think it turned out really cute!

As in Ada's design, the "1" is from GG Designs' Chubby Wubby Applique Numbers and "Kate" is stitched with Tinker Toy from 8 Claws and a Paw.


Rachel got a red shirt for Kate to wear underneath the jumper. If I get a picture of Kate in her jumper, I'll add it later.

Throughout this process, Carlin said I may have to change my blog name. Maybe "Stitched by Janay, Inspired by J.J." ?? He's one of the creative mind behind Jackson's crayon tool belt. These two keep me on my toes, that's for sure. Next time I'm faced with a stitching dilemma or need inspiration, I'm calling J.J.!