Princess Birthday Shirt

Presley attended a princess themed birthday party recently and needed to take a special gift:

I used the Chubby Wubby applique numbers from GG Designs for the 3, picking a fabric with scattered princessy things. I added the crown with Applique Cafe's Add a Crown design and stitched her name with the Swirley font from 8 Claws and a Paw.

I also monogrammed an insert for a little travel mug using the same fabric and font (sorry for the lousy picture):

Silent Auction Donation

Tonight there was a Spring Festival at my daughter's school. Each class was assigned a theme for a class basket that would be put into a silent auction. Our theme was "Car Wash." When I got the list of suggested items for donation, the one that jumped out at me was travel mug. :)

I used Embroidery Boutique's Owl Branch Applique and added the text with Embird Alphabet #14.

Here it is sitting on the table. I don't know what the final bid was. I considered bidding myself, but then decided that was ridiculous, I can just make another one. :)

Monogramming travel cups

Yesterday a friend called with an embroidery request. She had bought a personalized travel mug at a local boutique, but the gal that does their embroidery was out of town for a week. So I did it for her! I used Embird Alphabet #17 (Curlz).


This week is spring break and Annaliese and I had the pleasure of entertaining the son of one of Carlin's co-workers. Today the sippy cup he brought was one of Playtex's Create-my-own-cups. It was missing an insert and I just couldn't let him leave with it empty! :) I used Five Star Font's Baseball Monogram. Here's the insert:

And in the cup. If I had to do it over again, I would scoot "jack" more to the left so it is closer to the baseball. This monogram may be a touch too wide for this type of cup. But it's cute none the less and I whipped it out really quickly while we all were dancing and singing along with a CD.

Harold, you're gonna love this, AND I MEAN IT!

After successfully making several inserts for the Dollar Tree mugs, I decided to make one for my father-in-law Harold, but using the nice clear travel mugs available at Target. I found great fabric that looks like steam swirls on coffee-colored background. I searched Sew Forum for a design to go with my text "Harold's Starter Fluid" and found a car themed design that stitched perfectly. I was tickled pink. UNTIL I tried to put the insert in the silly cup. I had read from several other crafters that it was difficult to do with this mug, but it was nearly impossible!! It took me well over an hour. I was determined to get it in, but at 12:15AM I had to give up and finish the next morning. It was a battle of wills between me and the cup, and I won, but with casualties. The strategy that eventually worked (slowly but surely) was to use straight pins to push the embroidery under the lip of the clear plastic. I broke at least 7 straight pins doing it, and my index finger was sore for days! Once I healed, I determined it was worth the effort. And I'm pretty confident his enthusiasm this morning was genuine!

Merry Christmas, Brice!

Brice, my nearly 20-year old brother, is into music and Celtic stuff. I had nothing appropriate in my design stash, but thanks to lovely designers on Sew Forum, I found a couple to use relatively quickly!
First is a travel mug insert. I used a tribal cross design and added his name with Embird Alphabet #33 (using an envelope to make it slanted). It was perfect -- he loved it!

Second is a can koozie (ignore the Princess sippy cup... can you believe there isn't a pop can in our home??). I added his name with Embird Alphabet #2 (again in an envelope) to the guitar design.

Personalized Travel Mugs

Following the craze that has hit SewForum.com, I've tried my hand at personalized travel mugs. This particular batch was purchased at Dollar Tree. They are only 11 oz, so they work pretty well for kids. I first made one for Annaliese. The large monogram was a freebie on SewForum, and I added her name with Embird Alphabet #17.



I decided I wanted another family to experiment with the cups before I started offering them, so I made a couple for Kylie and Kenzie. They were a thank you gift for hosting Thanksgiving, and then all our girls took them to Wild Adventures together.


Then today Annaliese attended a joint birthday party for three of her little friends, so we took personalized mugs for each of them:

Ethan's monogram was also a freebie on Sew Forum. I enjoyed using variegated thread on each of them for the outline of the large letter and all the little embellishments -- it added an extra layer of interest!