Another Truly Customized Baby Gift :)

I love getting emails from Tiffany; she always has fun requests. :) Here's the gift she's sending to a friend who just had a baby:

This little family lives on a boat in the Virgin Islands (!) so Tiffany requested a onesie with a sailboat on it. I used the boat from Embroidery Boutique's Sailboat Patch design. I added "SARABANDE" (the name of the boat) with Embird Alphabet #16.

To add a little fun to the onesie, here's the backside:

Tee-hee-hee... clever idea.

For the lime green bib, we reused an idea Tiffany had suggested three years ago for her niece. Louis and Steve are the dogs. :) The text is Embird Alphabet #18, and the paw prints came from Sew Forum (no longer available).

And the peach bib requires a bit of explanation... "She is a huge fan of the Steven Martin movie /The Jerk/, where he is raised by an African-American family and doesn't realize he's adopted and cries with that line when he figures it out. I know they are going to absolutely die laughing." Ha! Inside jokes are one of the best things about doing custom embroidery!

Princess Sweatshirt

My little buddy Kenzie picked out this princess for me to applique on the sweatshirt Valerie bought... for a dollar! Gotta love clearance shopping!! :)

The princess design is from Planet Applique. I used some of the Michael Miller Fairy Frost material for the dress and crown -- I love the little extra sparkle it provides!

New Year's Resolution

One of my New Year's resolutions is to make sure there is a watermark on all of my images. :(

While perusing facebook pages and profiles of fellow embroiderers I found a couple of my images on someone else's wall. No credit given, no statement like, "Isn't this cute? I could recreate it if you like." Just my pictures. Pictures of two very special shirts for my daughter that I spent HOURS searching for the perfect designs and then adding custom text to. I'll be honest, I felt like I had been punched in the gut.

Now, I'm not speaking against those embroiderers who have albums of images of designs they have purchased. They are using images that come straight from the digitizer's website to show their customers what they have available. That's perfectly fine (assuming the digitizer has given you permission to use their images). I own thousands of designs that I haven't stitched out yet. Someday I may do the same thing, I just haven't taken the time.

HOWEVER, when you take my images of my work and mix them in with yours, it's as if you are claiming it as your own work. That's not right. It's not fair to your customers and it certainly isn't fair to me.

Obviously I don't care if you use my blog for inspiration. I blog in painstaking detail giving credit to digitizers for every project I stitch. I supply direct links to the sites so you can purchase the designs yourself. I don't claim to be all that creative on my own -- I LOVE the online sewing community and all the inspiration I get from blogs, Sew Forum, facebook pages, etc. Please feel free to reuse my ideas! But please, please do not use my images without my permission. The bottom line is these are photographs I have taken with my camera. They are not yours, they are mine. Thank you for respecting that.

Now here are a couple of things I don't mind stumbling across. Actually it's pretty exciting. :)
http://tipnut.com/free-casserole-tote-tutorial/
http://www.wisebread.com/bang-up-ideas-for-bandanas
Did you see Susie's casserole carrier and Annaliese twirling around in a bandana dress? More importantly, did you see the links back to my blog?? There you go, that's how this wonderful sewing community is supposed to work!!

Branding a Bathroom

My dad grew up on a wheat and cattle ranch in Kansas. Post grad school he spent his entire career as a professor at the University of Illinois. He retired in August and my parents moved back to KS after building a new house on Grandma's lot. Mom asked for my help in decorating their downstairs bathroom, and I was thrilled with her idea!
Even though they don't use it any longer, the 7HC brand is registered in my dad's name. They wanted to incorporate the brand into their bathroom decor, so mom sent me an image of the brand and I digitized it.
When they came to visit after Christmas, the first thing I did was stitch the brand design on some hand towels she brought:

This is a picture of the actual brand:

Annaliese was very curious about branding but my explanations hadn't been sufficient, so she got a nice little education from Granddad himself while they were here about how and why they branded cattle back in "the old days."

My mom is going to make a shower curtain for the bathroom. This is her plan:

So I stitched the brand several times on patches which she will trim down to size and piece into the shower curtain at home.

While here, Mom really liked the frame on the hand towels in one of our bathrooms, so I made a couple patches for her which I think she plans to applique on bath towels. The swirl frame is from 8 Claws and a Paw.

When Mom is all done with the bathroom, I'll post pictures of the final product. It was so fun helping them create  unique and meaningful decor!

Monogrammed Blankets

Both Carol and Elaine asked me to monogram some blankets they planned to give as Christmas gifts.  These were such nice blankets!  Huge (50x70" I think) and super soft!!  I was tempted to accidentally put my monogram on one of them. :)
Three of Carol's blankets were for men, so I used the Circle Monogram Set 3 from Embroidery Arts.

  For the other two I used Embird alphabet #7 to add the names:

Elaine's blankets were for her sons and their wives (or wife-to-be), plus one for herself and Charlie. I used the Empire font from Embroidery Arts.

Nameflake Ornaments

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I had stitched a ton of Nameflake ornaments in the last two months. Now that Christmas is past, I can share the first eleven that I made for Michelle:

I created each flake myself using Embird alphabet #38. I love how unique each name is!

Sweatshirts

Marci asked me to customize some sweatshirts for her daughter and nieces. She requested a monkey for Emery:

I used Lynnie Pinnie's Girl Monkey Applique design, and added her name with Swirley font from 8 Claws and a Paw.

 Marci requested a bug for Baylee:

I used a ladybug applique from SWAK Embroidery, and added her name with Swirley as well.
When Lacie saw the cute ladybug design, she picked it as well! Since her shirt is navy, we opted for a pink and green color scheme:

Special Delivery

Lisa asked me to make a Special Delivery onesie for her grandson. If my calculations are correct, this is my 60th time stitching the Special Delivery design!! 

This one is even more unique than the rest. I think it's the first time I've included a nickname in the design. Also, Lisa asked me to add extra text below the design, which I did using Embird alphabet #2. The original design is from Sew Terific Designs; I customized the design with baby's birthplace, birth date, time, weight and full name.

Custom Grandparent gifts

Early in the fall Kelli contacted me about making gifts for their parents. She had a vision, and it was fun trying to make that a reality. The designs on these bags took a while to create, but I learned something new about my Embird Studio software and it was worth it!
This bag is for Grandma Debby:

I used Five Star Font's Deco Heart Applique as my starting point. The design is actually a double heart.  I used the outside heart as my baseline for the text, and only appliqued the inside heart. I used Embird alphabet #38 to add the names and birth dates of her four grandchildren.

Grandmother Pansy (aka Oma) got this bag:

For Grandfather Lyle (aka Opa) Kelli wanted a shirt similar to the two I made around Father's Day. Thankfully she did the hard part ahead of time... she looked at all the Stick Figure Faces from Embroidery Library and picked which ones best represented Opa's grandkids. I used Embird Alphabet #8 to add "Opa's Pit Crew" and the names of the kids.