First Day of School 2014

Well, the day finally arrived... my little man is in kindergarten, and my big girl is in fifth grade! How did this happen?!?

This is the one year that they will be at the same school, Dashiell's first year as a Springwood Owl, and Annaliese's last. I am so incredibly blessed that not only do they want to wear applique shirts to school, but they genuinely want to MATCH! Mommy is soaking it in and taking advantage as long as possible. :)
I knew I wanted to use owls, so when I saw Beau Mitchell Boutique's scholar owls at the beginning of summer, I knew they were it!  I added the text with I2S's Covered by Your Grace.

I used the Owl Scholar for Dashiell:

Out of all my aqua fabrics, he picked the chevron! I was surprised...

And the Owl Girl Scholar for Annaliese:

 I didn't really give Annaliese much of a choice on fabric, so thankfully she agreed with my vision, ha!

Here they are, ready to walk to their classrooms! They got lots of compliments on their shirts :)
They had a great first day and we anticipate an awesome year!

Annaliese is TEN!

I feel like I say this with shock and dismay every year, but today is my daughter's birthday and she's 10. TEN! Double digits! How is that even possible?!
Thankfully she still loves to wear applique shirts so I got to make something special for her yet again:

She requested this herself, a cake plate where the pedestal is a 10. Clever idea, right? And not only does she still like applique shirts, she specifically wanted this puff sleeves and ruffle bottom shirt :)

I started with I2S's Cake on Stand, but I deleted out the pedestal and inserted the numbers from One Thing. Annaliese picked the fabrics and threads herself! Thankfully they were EXACTLY what I had envisioned using, too. Yay! Easy Peasy project.

I love my girl, she makes parenthood a delight!

Let's Play Ball!

I don't have an athletic bone in my body, but Dashiell sure does! That sports gene from my dad jumped right over me and into him. This year he has started Tee Ball! I don't have a whole lot of interest in sports, so I'm making up for it in cute clothing :) Yesterday was his first game, and Annaliese and I were sporting new shirts for the occasion.

 

As you can see, his team colors are maroon and gray, so I went with a heather gray shirts, used white sports vinyl for the applique, and maroon and dark gray threads.

My shirt uses a relatively new Tee Ball Mom design from Katelyn's Kreative Stitches. I added Dashiell's number with her Corinthia Script (it includes numbers and punctuation!) I really like how it turned out!

For Annaliese's shirt I used the Baseball Bats Heart design from the March 2014 set of The Applique Club. I added the text with I2S Hambone. I think it looks great with the wood grain fabric and vinyl!

Here she is, watching intently :)

Fall, er... wait, make that a Spring Dress!

Who says brown can't be a spring color?!

I bought this dress for Annaliese back in SEPTEMBER with every intention of making a lovely fall dress for her. Pumpkins, acorns, leaves, I don't know, but something with lots of yellows and oranges. But we had such a hot fall here in FL that it didn't get really get cool enough for long sleeves until a week before Thanksgiving, and by that time I was not going to invest my time in a fall dress anymore. I spent another month or so debating what sort of little winter character I could use with pinks and reds that could be used for Christmas and beyond... but that didn't ever happen either.
Inspired by this pretty floral fabric that happened to have a touch of brown in the print, I decided to go spring! We picked EB's Swirly for her initial on the bodice of the dress:

And used the applique flower that is in the January design set from the Applique Club:

Whew, we are done! And thankfully even though this girl seems to be getting taller everyday, this dress is still a fantastic length for her. Maybe, just maybe it will still fit next fall! And flowers bloom year round here, so it will always be in season, right?!

Matching Applique Monogram shirts

Take a look at my mini-me!

(Actually, both of my kids are really mini versions of their daddy -- they look and act just like him, it's a good thing I love him to pieces! But when we dress alike I can pretend she's a mini-me)

I had just bought myself a new pink shirt, we discovered one for her in my stash of blanks, and she started jumping up and down at the idea of matching shirts! The timing was perfect, I got to test Embroidery Boutique's new Elegant Vine Applique Alphabet on them.

My shirt uses the 6" version. I used some of my favorite fabric. It's a discontinued Riley Blake print and I only have a small piece left -- hopefully putting it on a shirt for myself will make it last forever. I can't outgrow this! ;)

Annaliese's shirt uses the 5" size. This is kind of an example for how a busy print doesn't work as well at smaller sizes. It's not quite as legible as mine (I think there is less contrast between her pink shirt than mine, as well). Either way, she likes it!

These monograms are quick to stitch, but tedious trimming! I love the results.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from the Trammels!

I love these PJs from ARB Blanks! I ended up not doing the Christmas preorder. Cristy surprised me with a pair for Annaliese in a box of blanks goodies, so I waited for Dashiell's red Valentine's PJs to arrive to make them a matching set. We picked a snowman so it would be seasonably appropriate for a couple months (because you know, we get so much snow here in FL, ha!) Annaliese picked the fabrics and wanted the designs to be identical. We use I2S's Snowman, and added their monograms with Natural Circle.

I guess I didn't get a close up picture of Dashiell's shirt, just Annaliese's. The only difference is we left off the pink cheeks on his, and it has his initials instead.

Heart Box for my girls

Simple design with awesome fabrics make for a nice quick Valentine's day shirt for my daughter... and her doll!

This is I2S's Heart Box. The file has been updated, so if you do custom embroidery and already own this design, go redownload it from your account online! (Slightly new heart shape, and now includes the 2.75" size for dolls.)

I love the colors of these heart prints. I used the large scale for Annaliese:

And the small scale for Anna:

Sweet and simple!

Owl LOVE X 2

Long-time blog followers know that we love owls since it's our elementary school's mascot. :)
Last weekend my daughter's BFF at school had a birthday party, so obviously I was already considering a turquoise shirt with an owl design as our gift. What I didn't factor in was that by deciding to use a new-to-me design, I'd have to make one for my daughter, too, so they could match. Ahhhhh... girls. ;)
Today was Twin Day at school, so the timing was quite perfect!

The Owl LOVE design is from the Itch 2 Stitch. This colorful fabric was the inspiration for the color palette:

We selected 3 coordinating Ta Dots and used the print for the owl. My big hang up was thread colors. I didn't have a perfect dark purple, dark pink or .... whatever that green color is. I did have a good match for the lighter purple dot and lighter pink dot, but not for the green dots in the fabric, every thread I had was too bright. So I decided to shake things up a bit (this is very unlike me) and outline the letters with contrasting colors. WHOA! This is bright!

Can I be honest, I didn't exactly LOVE it. But Annaliese did and still begged me to make a second. I really did not want it to be identical, so we rearranged the fabrics and threads for the second version. Equally as bright!

I will confess though that I'm totally impressed with my fussy cutting fabric placement on the owls!! WOO HOO HOO! 

More fall designs...

I've shared some scarecrows and pumpkins already; here are a couple more fall projects before I move into turkeys :)
Dashiell's beloved preschool teacher loves sock monkeys. I have a few aprons for her that I'm going to do seasonal sock monkey designs on, and first up, one for fall!

I had to get my merge on for this project. Even though DBJJ has a harvest themed sock monkey set, it's not yet available in applique form. So I made up my own! I used a girl from the original Sock Monkey set and merged it on top of a pumpkin from the Harvest Patchwork set. I did quite a bit of editing to simplify (one fabric instead of five, delete some interior satin stitches and let the tackdowns provide detail) and remove the pumpkin stitches under the monkey. I love how this turned out!

I ordered a long sleeved brown shirt for Annaliese earlier in the year, and as long as we live in FL I don't think I'll do that again! By the time it got "cold" enough to wear long sleeves, most of fall is over! I'm hoping a sunflower can endure through the next few months better than wearing a pumpkin or turkey in January. ;)

The sunflower applique is from the Itch 2 Stitch, and I added her monogram with Natural Circle.
I really like this design. Only 2 fabrics, but the petals are outlined with two different colors so it adds a bit of variety, but not a nightmare to trim. :)

Pumpkin Shirts 2013

Yesterday we took a quick trip to a local pumpkin patch!

As of late, virtually all my projects have been centered around testing designs. I love doing that -- getting to pick my very own fabric combos before seeing what other embroiderers do. This project however is the exact opposite, ha! I saw a beautiful pumpkin shirt posted by an I2S customer on Facebook and fell in love -- could not get it out of my head! So I decided to borrow the idea for my kids. Please don't think less of me. :)

The pumpkin trio applique is from I2S. On Annaliese's I used I2S's Fancy Oval monogram and this chevron with purples:

 For Dashiell I used I2S's Natural Circle monogram with the aqua chevron:

I love how these turned out and I hope they still fit next year :)

First Day of School 2013

Another school year is here, and my kids are ready!

Oh wait! I promise that's the result of bright sunshine and gnats on the grassy lot outside of school. Let's try again against the building...

Both of my kids were very excited to start school back up today! That is a blessing I do not take for granted. They were also both thrilled with their first day of school shirts that they helped design. Neither are exactly what *I* would have picked in terms of fabrics and threads, but it's exactly what they wanted, and I aim to please my two favorite customers. :)

Annaliese selected East Coast Applique's "Sweet Grade" design. I added "4th" by using the 4 from 8CP's Frills and the th from 8CP's Waiting.

She has two skirts in her closet that we love (great length for her long legs plus they built in shorts) but they are ODD colors and we can't find matching shirts for them. Applique to the rescue! :) Although honestly I didn't have much fabric in my stash to match them either. She decided to pick colors so that it would match BOTH skirts. Whew, that was a challenge but we figured it out!

 Dashiell loved ECA's School is a Blast design. I wish I could have recorded our negotiation session picking fabrics and threads. Green had to go (it's sneaky afterall). It was ok for the pencil to be yellow, but the star could NOT be yellow. So he made that red and insisted that "is" be yellow in it's place. He also wanted a solid red P and not one of my "beautiful" fabrics (I had picked a cool chevron or a cool stripe for him to choose from). So... it's not exactly the most balanced and legible design, but it's what he wanted :)

 And his reaction to the completed shirt made it worthwhile: "Wow Mommy that's great! I could wear that forever!"

Our kids delivered their school supplies in personalized shopping totes:

 Annaliese's classroom is decorated with a baseball theme, so I used ECA's divided baseball (vintage stitch) and 8CP's College Block Small.

Dashiell's teacher likes cherries :) So I went on a hunt for a large single cherry design to use as a patch. I ended up modifying 8CP's Applique Cherries design. I separated out one of the cherries and enlarged it A LOT (like 80%?!) which of course made the satin stitches huge. That's ok, my plan was to delete them anyway and just make it a raggy patch. When I deleted the satin stitches, I noticed the tackdown was a lovely blanket stitch, which worked perfectly! :)  I added her name with 8CP's Janessa.