Sports Bag

Let's see... how many weeks have we been in school? Dashiell has been using one of Annaliese's old preschool bags, even though I bought a tote bag to stitch something on for him before school started. I just couldn't get inspired for what to put on it. My goal was a school themed applique, but I wasn't in love with anything (for a boy).
Then this week I decided it didn't have to be school themed, and I could use it as an opportunity to test out the new sports ball vinyl that my MIL bought for me!! Didn't this turn out cute?!?

I used the Sportsballs Applique design from Planet Applique, although I deleted out the soccer ball. No offense to  soccer lovers, I just wanted to simplify a bit and have space to add his name. I used the College Block Small alphabet from 8 Claws and a Paw to add "Dashiell".

Ok, let me weigh in here on this vinyl. My MIL purchased a yard of each (as well as black) from 1st Impressions Designs and gave me half of it! It's pretty cool stuff! It cuts easier than I expected. I used these applique scissors and they did great. I had complete coverage with the satin stitches, no vinyl poking out.
While I love the looks of this design, I would not recommend using vinyl with it. They way the tackdowns are digitized the balls overlap by about 1/4", which is no big deal when using regular cotton material, but vinyl makes it pretty thick right where the satin stitches need to go. In fact I broke a needle, and there was about a 1" stretch on the football that my machine just would NOT do the satin stitches on, I had to do it manually with my sewing machine.
Here's a close up for two reasons... first, look at the awesome texture of this vinyl! Second, see the top of the baseball where the right red stitching lines come out... the white satin stitches there are very narrow. That's caused by three layers of vinyl and two layers of satin stitches BEFORE the white was stitched. YIKES! I was holding my breath with my finger on the stop button as it stitched across there!

So... I will stitch this design again, but with cotton fabric. And I will definitely use the vinyl again, but on a design that doesn't have the ball fabrics overlap.
My next project with the vinyl will be a shirt for Dashiell -- I want to experiment with laundering it!