Happy Birthday, Peyton!

Today is Peyton's second birthday! Yesterday she celebrated with a teddy bear picnic theme, and Sarah asked me to create a shirt for her to wear.

You know, I'm not aware of very many teddy bear designs! I remembered this one from when Grandma Kathy made a bib for Annaliese's first birthday. It's from Sew Many Designs. I added Peyton's name and the "2" with Swirley from 8 Claws and a Paw.

First Day of School

Today is Annaliese's first day of Kindergarten! She is so excited!!

Annaliese received some back to school clothing items from her grandmothers (which I'll post pictures of later this week on our family blog). And in the end, I'm pretty sure that Annaliese will prefer those items. But I really wanted her first day of school shirt to be made by me! :)
Back in the fall when I bought the designs for Annaliese's NOEL shirt and FARM shirt from Sew Many Designs, I also bought this SCHOOL design. Kathy helped me out by digitizing the rest of the text using the font First Grader.

I picked a light brown heather shirt from my stash and brown thread to match a skirt she already had.

I know it may seem like a lot of work for something dated, but I'm sure she'll wear it more than just today (she wore her First Airplane Trip shirt a ton). AND I know eventually her shirts will be put into a quilt, so I like having it dated for that reason. Not that I have to justify myself to you. Just explaining my thinking. :)

Now I'm off to boo-hoo with some friends.

Annaliese's Spring A-Line

I made Annaliese a reversible A-line dress for Easter (using Martha Pullen's pattern).

The Easter egg applique is from Sew Many Designs.


That side didn't take very long to do. It was the OTHER side that I put a lot of work into:



Annaliese is really into My Little Pony right now (see her Easter basket and you'll know how excited she was this morning!) so I decided to make her a pony dress using the appliques from Designs by JuJu. I used rickrack as grassy hills to help divide up the dress. Annaliese and I picked fabric and threads to match four of her favorite ponies.
Scootaloo:

Sweetie Belle:

Aster:

and Toola-Roola:

Annaliese LOVES it, so it was worth all the work:

Special thanks to Valerie who let Annaliese come over to play for an entire afternoon so I could sew all day and get this dress done! :)

F is for Farm!

This week Annaliese's class is studying the letter "F" with a focus on "Farm." I knew this was coming, so back in November when I bought a custom design set from
Sew Many Designs, I picked this cute FARM design. SMD applique designs take a while to stitch out (lots of fabric patches and detail) but they stitch flawlessly and are sooooooooo cute! I especially love her word designs that substitute items for letters (like the NOEL shirt I made in November).



I also have Designs by JuJu's Barnyard Buddies. I had lofty goals of embellishing jeans or a skirt with these designs, but that didn't happen. Maybe at another time...

Christmas Outfit #3

In addition to the Nativity shirt, I got Annaliese's third Christmas shirt stitched yesterday, finishing about 20 minutes before our guests arrived to eat, so I didn't get pictures taken until this morning!

Last year I bought these cute leggings at Wal-Mart on clearance after Christmas. I thought the strand of lights was cute and knew I could find several matching designs. I gave Annaliese several options, and she picked this NOEL design from Sew Many Designs. Annaliese just told me that her favorite letter is the "L" (I picked pink and red fabrics to match the candy canes in the pants) but her most favorite is the fuzzy reindeer. :) I made sure all the lights in his antlers matched those in the leggings as well.

So here she is in her third outfit. Now I just have an A-line dress to make and I can cross "Annaliese's Christmas wardrobe" off my to-do list!