First Birthday Shirts

Recently I've had the pleasure of making several birthday shirts for little friends. Today I'll share a couple First Birthday designs!
Grayson's mommy requested a cupcake with a #1 candle and her name. I was delighted to use this adorable design from GG Designs (I love her number candle cupcakes!) I added her name with 8CP's Jingle.

Annabelle's mommy requested simply a #1 candle. I used 8CP's Applique Birthday Candle Number, and added her name with Embird Alphabet #7 (to match a bib set I made last year).

Monogramming for friend's sewing projects

Purely out of curiosity, I spent some free time over the last few days figuring out how many different fonts from 8 Claws and a Paw I have used. At least 119, can you believe it?! I'm going to keep a running track of them on my Facebook page.

In the process I realized I never blogged about these projects! My friend and best customer Michelle made some baby gifts herself last fall. I played a small role... I monogrammed the fabric first before she constructed the burp cloths. Didn't these turn out cute?

I used 8CP's Lucille for Lilly's three-letter monogram (her name was done with Candi)

 For the boys, I used Whoa Nelly for their name and monogram.

All the fabric was from a couple of Riley Blake lines, and I think she used this tutorial for the contoured burp cloths.

Box Font birthday shirts for boys

It's time for Jimmie's birthday again! He's having a Thomas party and requested Itch 2 Stitch's Box Font Number 4 with Thomas fabric. I added his name with 8CP's Tiny font.

It turned out so well that I decided to use the same idea for Jackson, my son's little buddy whose Cars themed party was yesterday. I used the Box Font 5 with I2S's Barnyard font for his name. He LOVED it and was quite proud to wear it all day. Warms my heart. :)

Quick comparison picture to show you how I improved on an earlier experiment. My very first project with I2S's Box font was Dashiell's shirt, but honestly while I loved the idea of combining the Lightning McQueen fabric with the checkered flag fabric, it was too busy and his name got lost. Going with solid black for Jackson was definitely an improvement!

Using a fabric with a printed motif can be tricky... let me show you how I figured out what to do. I draped the fabric over my computer screen where I could see the embroidery design, and get my fabric perfectly placed:

 Then I take a picture of it with my phone and pull it into Photoshop. I do some rough, and I mean ROUGH painting to see if I like what I see. :)  If so, then I use a water soluble marking pen on the fabric so I can line up the fabric with the placement lines at the embroidery machine.

 

Here's the preview image I sent for Jimmie's design. This literally was the ONLY fabric position where I could get all the Thomas images facing up.

You can really make fabric work for you in an applique design with just a little extra effort!

Pretty Rainbow

This sweet little rainbow design intrigued me. I wanted to use the 4x4 design and needed a little girl with a short name... Emily it was! Bonus, I already had a onesie in my stash her size, woo-hoo!

The applique is Lynnie Pinnie's Rainbow Frame Deco, such a quick stitchout! (There is a satin stitch version, too.) I added her name with LP's new Strawberry Limeade font. This is the smallest size and stitched beautifully!
I was anxious to play with 3 fabrics and 4 thread colors to make a colorful rainbow. I opted for red/yellow/blue for the fabrics, and pink/orange/green/purple for the threads. I think it turned out really pretty using the secondary colors for the threads instead of perfectly matching!

Split Banner Applique

I'm really excited about this new applique font, I've already used it twice, but can only show you one for now ;)
A couple of weeks ago I tried a split circle monogram on a shirt for my girl. My little guy gets to be the model this time:

The applique is from 8CP's new Split Banner Applique. I really like it! I added his name with the half inch version of College Block Small (which comes with the Applique alphabet)

The applique alphabet comes in 4 sizes. The Split Banner numbers (1-12, plus several extras) are sold in a different set. Great for birthday shirts, anniversary designs, 100th day of school... what else can you think of? Currently there is a sale: if you buy the banner alphabet, you get the numbers for free! Sale runs through Sunday 2/24, so hop to it.

Welcoming Baby Landon

I know at least NINE families expecting babies at the moment, so you will be seeing several posts about baby shower gifts in the next few months. First up, baby Landon! His arrival will make Peyton a big sister, so I took this as an opportunity to use new-to-me sibling designs:

Aren't these so cute?! As I was merging together designs similar to my last sibling set, an embroidery friend of mine showed off pictures of her most recent project. I stopped in my tracks and changed plans!

The Big Sister and Little Mister designs are both from Embroitique. Embroidery friends, if you purchase the designs, I'd appreciate if you would use those specific links when you add them to your cart! :)
I was super excited when I scrolled through my 8CP font images that I found High 5 was a perfect match to add their names! Peyton loves purple, so I was excited to use these Riley Blake chevrons, purple/orange for her and aqua/orange for him.

I have never used Embroitique designs before, so I don't know if this is her typical style or not, but the applique words on these were digitized in a unique manner. Instead of treating it as three separate letters, it was one whole object. It was intriguing to watch the pathing on the whole thing -- there weren't any jumps going from outside the letter to the holes in "big". The only reason I mention this is in case you happen to be stitching one of these on a little inside-out 3-6 month onesie that you are holding open with your fingers... beware that the needle may not follow the path you expect. ;) 

I also did this burp cloth, using Lynnie Pinnie's Little Cutie Space Explorer Boy. I was testing it for LP and intentionally decided to not use the Buzz Lightyear white/purple/green color scheme to show how versatile the design could be. Out of this world adorable!

Monogrammed polos for my boy

Grandma sent Dashiell a couple of polos, and I added his monogram to them this weekend.
(Pardon the photography, I've given up getting a good picture of a red shirt.)

The stacked monogram on the navy shirt uses Back to Basics from 8CP. I used the half inch size for D and V and 1" size for the T (maybe a touch of resizing and adjusting pull compensation to get it to form a little square). Super pleased how it turned out, literally a 2 minute stitch time. Took longer to hoop the shirt!
The traditional monogram on the red shirt is 8CP's brand new Formal Monogram. I used the 2" size.
He wore the navy polo to shirt this morning, but would not cooperate when I asked to take a picture. This is what I got. :)

Love Bug

Annaliese has had a pair of ladybug socks for... um... a LONG time. Throughout the years she has asked for a matching shirt, but it really never made my priority list. This week she asked yet again, so I looked more seriously for an applique design that would closely match. We picked this Love Bug design from 8CP. As we selected fabrics together she exclaimed, "I will finally get to wear these socks in public!!" as if not having a matching shirt has prevented it for all this time. (insert eye roll)
Anyway, it sure turned out cute!! I was thrilled to find a design that had heart shaped dots AND the Love Bug text already merged together! I anticipated having to do a bunch of design editing to accomplish my goal, but I didn't! Woo-hoo!

She's quite pleased:

Quick side note, gotta love a wonky shirt. :/ And this is from Gymboree! I'm usually very diligent at examining shirts in stores before buying, I don't know how it passed inspection. Oh well, at least it was on clearance with additional sale. It was really hard to decide how to place the design since nothing is straight or even. Ultimately I centered with neckline instead of width across. Thankfully it looks good on!

Happy Easter Stay-Put Towel

I had the opportunity to test this sweet "Happy Easter" applique design for Lynnie Pinnie. I wanted to put the 4x4 size on a kitchen towel, and decided to use this as an opportunity to experiment again!

I love how it turned out! I looked through my stash and couldn't find a fabric that would make a nice base for the design, and thought... do I even need add a fabric square to the towel before making it a Stay-Put towel? Could I just do the V shaped hole with the design directly on the towel? Why yes I can!

The best part is this adorable design hangs up high, not way down at the bottom, so it's more visible. AND it's not the part of the towel we will use to dry our hands, so the design will always look this lovely. :)

(My Stay Put towel is inspired by the Topsy Towel tutorial posted on Embroidery Library. There is a free V-shaped buttonhole design posted on Sew Forum that goes with this tutorial.)