A couple final Christmas clothing items

Now that the holiday rush is over, it's time to catch up on my blog! WOW, I just made a  list of the items I haven't shared, and it's massive. To get started, here are a couple more Christmas clothing items that I didn't take the time to share. A pretty holiday dress for my daughter:

This dress was one of my favorite December projects! First of all, I got the dress for... get this... TWO DOLLARS at the beginning of the year when it was on clearance at Walmart. I had planned on putting a monogram on it all year long, and waited until December to get it done. As I was trying to decide the specifics, Annaliese came in and said she had a vision for what she wanted and tried to describe it. I told her to go draw it out and then we'd search 8 Claws and a Paw Embroidery for a match. I think we did pretty well!

 The font is Violet from 8CP. Honestly, it's one that I don't think I would have picked on my own, but it is LOVELY and I'm confident I will use it again.

Brittany asked me to make a First Christmas onesie for Kendal and this is what I came up with:

I used Applique Momma's Present2 design, and added the text with Embird Alphabet #8.

Alright, now I need to blog about a slew of baby gifts and Christmas presents!

For Unto Us a Child Is Born

I love that for this day the world pauses to remember the birth of our Savior.

We are separated from our biological family this year, so we spent Christmas eve with the next best thing -- our dearest friends. My friend Valerie truly has the gift of hospitality and provided a wonderful meal. My only addition to the dinner table was rolls. AND because earlier in the week I hastily read the recipe and missed a key step (letting the dough rise overnight, OOPS) I had to make a quick run to the grocery store to buy rolls. :( So, I found myself with extra time yesterday afternoon and decided to do for her what I do best: sew, not bake. :) I used Lynnie Pinnie's Nativity Silhouette applique on this red/green plaid kitchen towel.

However you spent today, remember that little baby grew up. Jesus lived a perfect life, bore our sins on the cross, and rose victorious over death. He's preparing a home in heaven for those who accept him as their Savior. THAT is worth celebrating everyday! God bless you!

Teacher Gifts 2011: Key Fobs!

I have made a TON of DigiStitches key fobs in the last few days. :) I just love mine so much and they are easy to make, so I decided to do them exclusively for teacher gifts this year. Eighteen total I think!

At the beginning of the month I gave these to Annaliese's ballet teachers. I love the extra detail of the embroidered ballet slippers (although I will say the key fobs are harder to invert when there is a filled design on it).

When Annaliese was in kindergarten I made key fobs for her teachers for Christmas. But in two year's time there are new faces and some name changes, so I decided to do them again. Only three people are repeats, but I decided a new style and longer size merited a new key fob. :) And only one of her teachers is male. I told him that my sinus infection prevented my creative juices from flowing, so if the key fob was too feminine for him, I would NOT be offended if he gave it to his wife/mom/daughter who might appreciate it more. :)
I used school colors and Embird alphabet #7.

Four years ago I made ribbon key chains for the staff at preschool. These wonderful women are ready for something new! Originally I had lofty goals of taking pictures of each of their purses and picking fabrics to match, but that didn't happen. :) Instead I picked this pretty Riley Blake fabric I won a while back from Whimsical Fabrics and used it for all of them.

I thought I would show you real quick how I mass produce the key fobs. When using the same fabric I can fit four key fobs in my 6x10 hoop. I merge four copies of the key fob together in Embird and do a color sort. So the first thing I do is lay a piece of batting down and run all four placement stitches:

Then I lay the fabric down and run all four quilting stitches:

Then I stitch the names. When I used white thread for all the elementary staff I did the names as one color stop. But since the Riley Blake fabric is rather busy, I didn't know what color thread would look best until I saw the placement of the motif. So I did each name as a separate color stop and decided on the spot whether I should use the light aqua or green thread for each key fob.

Then the last step at the machine is to tack down the back fabric:

Now I move to my cutting mat and use a rotary cutter to separate the key fobs. Four key fobs across my 6" hoop gives a perfect seam allowance between the key fobs!

Then I grabbed my handy-dandy Quick Turn tool to invert them. All that is left to do is add the hardware and they are done! So much fun and everyone loves them.
I am so thankful for all these wonderful people that teach, train, guide and protect my children when I am not with them. Just a small token of my appreciation. Merry Christmas to you all!

My Boy Wonder!

It is time for TWO-PERMAN to retire... now introducing my Boy Wonder!!

I had the hardest time coming up with a birthday shirt idea for my son. I asked my husband for ideas. We loved what we came up with last year to celebrate Dashiell's 2nd birthday Superman style. And even though he still really loves Superman, I didn't want to create a "3" design using the same idea, that's boring. :) Unbeknownst to me, my husband was drawing while we chatted. He showed me his iPhone artwork and I was immediately sold!

 Carlin and Dashiell pretend to be Batman and Robin all the time, so this was PERFECT.

I picked up three shirts at Hobby Lobby: a red for the shirt, a green for the sleeves and a yellow for the cape. I removed the sleeves of the red shirt and replaced them with the sleeves of the green shirt. Easier said than done when you have zero experience sewing with knit material, but it turned out well. :)

 For the embroidery design I did three simple lines of satin stitches, an applique circle, and used the "3" from 8CP's Sk8 font.

Robin's cape (at least in the rendition that Carlin wanted me to emulate) has a collar. Again, I don't really do garment construction, so I decided to just use a tee shirt and make a cape out of it. I removed the sleeves, cut up the side seams, and cut off the front of the shirt just below the collar. I attempted a rolled hem on the sides (which looks terrible) and a more traditional hem around the neck (also terrible). Oh well, it gets the job done. Dashiell can take it off and put it on by himself, which is a HUGE bonus. And I don't have to worry about him getting strings knotted or choking. He certainly didn't complain about my sloppy workmanship, so I'm calling it a WIN!

I did all of this with a sinus infection, so his costume is still a bit incomplete. He noticed right away that he didn't have a mask, so we hunted down this little Incredibles mask. I still need some green pants and green gloves... We'll see what I can find. :)
Here's my Dynamic Duo, Dashiell and Carlin Trammel, love them to pieces!!

Fantastic Ornament

The FitzSimmons asked me to make their 2011 Christmas ornament. And since Jason declared me the "Ultimate Nerd Wife" in the comment section of my recent guest post on my husband's blog, how could I refuse?!? :)

Their younger son was born earlier in the year, so this ornament commemorates their becoming a family of four, and uses the same designs we used to announce their pregnancy last fall.

Rapunzel... let down your hair!

I have a confession, but please don't tell Belle or Ariel. Tangled is my new favorite Disney Princess movie. I just love it!! I've been singing, "When Will My Life Begin?" for a week now thanks to this project:

Isn't this design adorable?!? It's part of a set of cutie princesses that Lynnie Pinnie just released. I knew right away I had to stitch Rapunzel on a shirt for Annaliese. She swooned when she saw the design. Then she told me that since Rapunzel's hair was 70 feet long, she wanted the hair on her shirt to be 7". Well, that meant I needed to do the 6x10 design. :) It's a big design, but worked well on this longer-than-normal shirt I had in my stash.
I really wanted to use the fairy frost fabric for Rapunzel's hair so it would "gleam and glow", but I only have 5" squares. I decided I was ok with a small seam in the middle instead of settling for just a boring yellow fabric. It's not too noticeable, right?

I had so much drama stitching this out -- NOT related to the design though! I had a major thread nest while tacking down the last piece of fabric and had to really wiggle my hoop to get the threads loose from the bobbin. My stabilizer loosened and I was terrified that I would have to scrap the whole project. But thankfully I was able to tug it back in place and everything lined up fine (so thankfully for LP's wide satin stitches which cover a multitude of user errors!). Then I had issues with the brown thread. I chose color over quality (none of my Marathon browns matched the fabric quite right) and quickly learned that my Brother machine does NOT like my Janome thread. It broke at least 6 times! I thought I would never get that section done! Then to top it all off, the power went out in the middle of the design!! AAAHHHH!!!! We lose power often, but that's the first time it has happened while sewing. So I had to go to bed in the dark and wait until later the next afternoon to finish. BUT it got done, we LOVE it, it was so worth the effort. :)

Christmas Shirts, Part 2

These shirts are for four of my little buddies at church. Each mommy sent me their requests and I was happy to oblige! First up, a onesie for Brooks:

I used Lynnie Pinnie's Reindeer with Ornaments Applique, and added the text with Embird Alphabet #8.

Tracy supplied this adorable turtleneck for Audrey's shirt:

This is Lynnie Pinnie's Simple Tree. I used the 5x7 design, but had a hard time figuring out how to recolor the 6 dots to have a mix of white and red without it looking funny. So finally I decided to leave them all red and just merge the smaller dots from the 4x4 design and color them white. We picked Another Dot Alphabet from 8CP to add her name. The perfect little bow is from Hobby Lobby. :)

Kate's winter shirt will last beyond December:

This is Planet Applique's Let it Snow 2 Alphabet.

And for Peyton I used Applique Cafe's Rudolph 2, adding her name with Swirley from 8CP.

Anxious to see these shirts in action!

Completing a family set of stockings

Last year, I'm pretty sure on December 26, Michele chatted me on Facebook to ask if I could make her daughter a stocking. Every other member of her family had a handmade stocking except for Katie, the youngest. I said, "Sure, I'll take a look, thanks for giving me a whole year's notice!" :)
Of course, when did I complete the stocking?? Not until the Saturday before Thanksgiving... ah well, I doubt Michele would have hung it up before then anyway.
Here's the final product:

And here's what I was trying to match:

 The beauty of these handmade stockings is they were made over the course of several years. Harry and Michelle's were made at the same time -- they have the same green felt, same lining fabric and same size Aida cloth. Peyton and Colin's however have a slightly darker green velvet, a different sized Aida cloth, and one had a different trim around the edge. They all had different ribbon hangers and were slightly different shapes. When I saw that, I was relieved -- it alieviated the pressure to make something *exactly* the same.
I can do cross-stitch, but I am WAY out of practice and have extremely limited supplies, so I enlisted the help of my friend Michelle. I'm pretty sure the weekend after I asked her to help she had already picked a design and stitched it. That was back in February. :) She was really on the ball, and did a fabulous job! Thanks, Michelle!!
I found the same color velvet as the boys' stockings, lined it with something from my stash and added an eyelet ribbon similar to Michele's.

I was pretty pleased with the results, especially since I have never made a fully lined stocking before! I traced one of the stockings for my pattern and just made up the construction process. Here are the kids' stockings -- I think Katie's coordinates quite well!

One last turkey shirt...

Even though I was super good and got Annaliese's turkey shirt made before November 1, I did end up stitching a turkey for her on Thanksgiving day...
Wednesday evening Annaliese was invited to bring her American Girl doll to Thanksgiving dinner. She asked me if Anna had a turkey shirt. Drat, I thought I had gotten away with not making one. :) I did end up with a bit of free time during nap time, so here's what I whipped up!

I took the 4x4 size of the applique turkey from the Harvest Patchwork set at Designs by JuJu and reduced it. I also deleted the satin stitches to save time. I had scraps from Annaliese's shirt which already had HNBL on it, so it went pretty quickly. The true creativity came in finding a blank. I knew I had a brown onesie in my stash, but discovered it was a short-sleeve 9-12 month size, which is HUGE for a doll. I decided to use it anyway. Chopped it off, did the applique, then took in the side seams/sleeves. I just laid an AG shirt on top of the onesie, drew in seam lines and stitched. Definitely NOT an exact science!

It fit Anna quite well, and bonus, it turned into a long sleeved shirt! Annaliese was quite pleased!

Now I'm hoping Annaliese's turkey shirt still fits her next Thanksgiving so they can match for another year!