Pencil Pouch

I finished this just in the nick of time! When Embroidery Garden released this cute Pencil Case Set a few weeks ago, I immediately thought it was adorable and debated for a few days whether or not to purchase the designs. I caved just before the coupon code expired, but required myself to make one for Annaliese before started school. Tomorrow is the first day, and guess what I JUST took pictures of... :)

This ITH design is lined with no exposed seams. It's so neat to watch how EG's designs are constructed! This pouch features a front vinyl pocket so you can see the contents. Believe it or not, this was the very first time I have used vinyl in an embroidery design. I'm anxious to see how this holds up to daily use by a third grader!

I added a few things to the pencil case as it stitched out:
First of all I wanted to put Annaliese's name on the pouch just like it would appear on a personalized pencil. I asked Reen on her Facebook wall which piece of fabric needed to be monogrammed first before constructing the case. She confirmed very quickly that it's the last piece of yellow fabric that is placed on the backside of the hoop. I picked Itty Bitty from 8 Claws and a Paw to stitch her name on the new Riley Blake tone-on-tone chevron I just got in the mail this week.
Another thing I added was an additional loop of ribbon/D-ring so that when Annaliese put it in her 3-hole binder it stays in place instead of sliding around. At the point in the directions when Reen tells you to tape down a loop of ribbon, I simply taped down an additional loop 4.25" below the first one.
And finally with Reen's blessing I swapped out the A that came on the apple zipper pull with the A from the font I used for her name, so it was very matchy-matchy.

Football Monogram

When I got done with Dashiell's tote bag using the sports ball vinyl, I did a google image search on sports balls applique designs -- just to see if there was something cool out there (that I didn't already have) that I could use on a shirt for him. And I stumbled upon this neat monogram!

This football applique alphabet is from Starbird Stock Designs. I had never been to this site before, and still need to explore it some more. But I was so intrigued by the design (and enticed by the amazing sale) that I decided to buy the letter D design and stitch it out to see if I wanted to purchase the whole alphabet. I really like the results!

For those of you that do machine applique, here's a bit of advice/info. I had to do a bit of editing in my software. The die line is only stitched once, and then the zigzag stitch came next. So I duplicated the die line to have a placement and tackdown stitch. It does the background color first, then the accent color, then the football, and then the white stitching last. The vinyl did very well on this design! You will want to use HNBL on the fabrics since it's a zigzag stitch. Actually this design kind of lends itself to felt -- may have to give that a whirl. And look at my pleased little boy!

The set comes with both the alphabet and numbers, which I think would make awesome birthday shirts. You can use whatever team colors you want, so it's super versatile, and you don't have to worry about any licensing issues! in our case GO NOLES!

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!