Monthly Milestones, ninja style!

Have you ever had a fantastic idea eight days too late? I did, and BOY was I mad at myself!! I whined about it to a friend who encouraged me not to abandon the idea but get creative. I'm so glad I did, I LOVE how this turned out!

 

The Ninja Numbers are from Lynnie Pinnie, I've already blogged about them a bit here. When I had the opportunity to test the 4" #1 design, I put it on a bib thinking some day it could make a good first birthday bib for someone. I wanted to test a few more, but had no project in mind, so I just stitched them on cutaway stabilizer. I had a passing thought of making them monthly milestones, but who would I give them to? I dismissed it pretty quickly.

Then eight days later I realized I knew EXACTLY who I could give them to!!! Lyndsie of Lynnie Pinnie herself! She's due very soon with a little boy. She digitized the set of numbers inspired by one of my projects, I tested them for her, and put them on bibs for her son! How perfect would that be?!
So I rehooped the #1 and stitched "month" across it. (I hadn't left myself enough space to put it below.) I used 8CP's Chinese Take Away for the text.

Next I had to deal with the five numbers I had stitched on stabilizer. I first fused HNBL on the back. Then I carefully trimmed away the stabilizer as close as possible without snipping any of the satin stitches.
Then I opened my software. I deleted every element of the design except for the placement and tackdown stitches. I hooped bib, ran placement stitches, laid the number down as perfectly as I could, and then tacked it down.

It wasn't as perfect as I had hoped, but it got the job done. If I could do over, I would have taken the time to use matching thread instead of white (was thinking it would look like a cool top stitch, but that's only true if it's perfectly lined up ;) ). I stitched the word "months" under it. When it was done and cleaned up I pressed from the back to activate the HNBL fusing the design to the bib.

Once those were done, I was halfway through!
Bibs #5, 8 and 9 were very straight forward:

But 10, 11 and 12 required more work of course!
For #10, I used the #1 from 8CP's Big Applique set, and flipped LP's #0 so the bandana overlapped. I did some design editing to remove underlay stitches. I would never let Lyndsie see the embroidery file (what a mess!) but the final product was great!

For #11, I couldn't use the #1 ninja number design, it just wasn't going to work the way the one was shaped. So I used two of the Big Applique 1's and put a mask over it.

For #12 I started off making it like the #10 but quickly realized I couldn't simply mirror the 2 design to get the mask to overlap the 1, that made the two backwards ;) So I separated out the eye mask, mirrored it, and did some scooting/rotating to get it lined up as perfectly as possible.

This project was SO FUN, and I couldn't wait to give it to Lyndsie! It was such an honor to meet her and deliver the gift in person on Friday night as we were setting up for Applique Getaway:

Now I can't wait to see the monthly milestones modeled once Jacoby arrives!