New Fabric/New Find Friday #76

How cute are these pink fabrics?! I love love love my little boy but I hope one day I get to dress a little girl in pink. When I saw these fabrics in the "scrap bin" I had to pick them up. Who doesn't love a little pink for some projects?

Well you already saw the pink and black leopard in my post Monday and I think this is one of those fabrics that is great for a little girl but I could see an adult having the inside of a purse or something made out of this fabric. The middle fabric is a pink cotton and will be great for blanket backs, solid but a pretty shade of pink. The gingham seems to be big again and the pink and white is so sweet.

I am so glad I was already able to use one of these prints and I know I will be using the other two, it is just a matter of time.

Baby Presents for E and C

I am learning more and more about my embroidery machine each day, what I can do with it, how to make it do what I want it to do, and just simple things like how to thread the needle. Let me tell you automatic needle threaders are great but tricky sometimes!
When I was working on these items that a friend commissioned for two new babies I ran into some more embroidery problems. I put the name Evan on this onesie and it ate a few holes in the onesie and it was puckered between the letters. I hated how it looked and decided to do it over again.

The second time making the onesie I thought I would try using my Yudu machine and screen print the name instead! I think it turned out MUCH better and I even changed the pattern and color of the outfit since I went ahead and gave them that other onesie for free, now they have two with different looks.

I really like how it turned out but I also wanted to fix the problems that I had on the other onesie so I went to learn more about my machine from the store where I purchased it and boy did I learn a lot. I hope that my future embroidery projects go so much smoother than this one did.

She also wanted me to add some initials to burp cloths so that she could apply ribbon and make them more personable for the two different babies. I love how simple the one initial is on the burp cloth, and thank goodness these went well on my machine!

There are more projects like this coming down the pike, be on the look out for a lot of personalized items.

Four Years Old!

My cousin's daughter just turned four over the weekend and my cousin wanted a shirt to go with the pink tutu that she was going to get her to wear that day. I suggested to do a pink leopard print 4 with her name embroidered below. I love the punch of pink on the black shirt.

Here she is all ready for her party with her new tutu skirt and shirt.

By the expression on her face I would say that she loves it! Okay maybe she loves the skirt more than the shirt...who wouldn't. :) Happy Birthday Claire!!

New Fabric/New Find Friday #75

Man is it hot this week, whew! I love summer and I wouldn't mind this but when you have no car AC you start to be a bit bothered. These two fabrics just scream summer to me, they remind me of summer dresses that I had as a child. I love the bold colors and all of the reds, pinks, and oranges.

These would make a cute baby girl's dress or shirt but I think I am going to use them for napkins. I have gotten on a kick of using cloth for as many things around the house as I can. We do still use paper towels sometimes but I am working on that. These would make such great cheery napkins and go really well with the colors in my house. Now I just need to find the time to make them!!

Basement Part I

It was a year in April that everything was moved out of the right side of our basement in preparation for being finished. We were going to hire someone to do the wall system (an indestructible removable system) and then finish the rest ourselves. Well here we are over a year later and we don't have much more, well the three walls are finished and there is a window back where it was boarded up. I CAN'T STAND IT ANYMORE! Everything that was in this part of the basement is not all over our house. Here is a before picture of the basement after we cleaned it out and before the walls went in.

I am really trying to be so patient with my husband and I know that so many things are out of his control (having a baby, breaking an ankle etc) but I can not wait to have this chaos removed from my life. I worry about when Bee starts crawling and how there is no part of our house that is and can be baby proof because of what we are doing in the basement and having stuff all over the house.

The good news is that when it is finished it will be a glorious space where we can all hang out and be together while doing what we need to do. There will be an office type area for my husband, a crafting area for me and a play/entertainment area for Bee. I realize we might have to gate off the craft area until Bee learns what he can and cannot play with, ie. the iron, but that is okay. It will be nice to contain all of the mess to this lower level and have some order upstairs where guest will enter.

In preparation for this moment I have been pinning lots of organizational ideas on pintrest that I might want to use in the basement. It is going to be so fun to finally have a space to decorate again from scratch. I have to pick the wall color for the fourth wall, flooring, arrange furniture and organize all three of the zones that I talked about earlier. I AM SO EXCITED!!! I get to do what I love, design and organization in order to make my hobby/second business easier to do.

I hope to keep you updated as the progress continues and show you more pictures and maybe I can even find a before before picture, one with all of our stuff in that part of the basement before we cleared it out.

New Fabric/New Find Friday #74

This is a few hours late, could not stay up last night to get this post finished. Two green fabric alike and totally different, and both say summer fun to me. The green on the left has very small tone on tone flowers. This picture does not do them justice. They are really pretty shades of greens with intricate lines and shapes that make up the flowers. I think this fabric will be great for a quilt or even part of an apron.  

The fabric on the right I was so excited to get. These green flowers go from small to large as they go down the fabric. If you can tell the row of flowers on the top is a bit smaller than the row on the bottom. I would love to make this into a skirt for myself but I might make it into an apron instead. I think it would be just daring!

So glad that summer is here but I am not loving the 100+ degree days. Makes it hard to go on walks with the baby and he LOVE his walks. We did squeeze one in this morning and maybe tomorrow will be a pool day!

Rhinestone Bride

Who doesn't love everyone to know you are the bride and about to get married! A friend was going to be in her really good friends wedding and wanted to make a "bride" and "mother of the bride" shirts for two of the most important ladies at the wedding. I helped her create the word images with my silhouette and rhinestones and she took care of ironing them to the shirts she got for these lovely ladies.

I think they turned out to be pretty cute. Great story from the bride is that she wore her shirt while they did stuff to prepare for the wedding, pedicures in this case, but her mom the MOTB wore her shirt at the rehearsal dinner! How great is that!

I love rhinestones and keep thinking of things that I want to add rhinestones to in my life. Maybe I will start out small with some flip flops or a small detail on an old pair of jeans. Can boys wear rhinestones? Rhinestone Cowboy? Probably not, guess I have to wait to have a girl before I can make cute personal rhinestone kid items. Although I already made something for my Goddaughter here.

Rain Cloud

Another really good friend and client who always sends me fun custom projects had another one up her sleeve. She sent me this picture and wanted me to create something for her like this (picture below). I said...sure! I love that this was created for a photo prop and I think it will look great in her son's room...or maybe she is going to put it in her room. :)

Well I took some blue fabric to make the cloud and tried to mimic the shape of the cloud. Not too bad for doing it freehand! Then I used a bunch of different colored ribbons to make the rain streamers. I think the original streamers were actually paper streamers but I didn't think that would hold up for very long so I thought ribbon would be the best.

I started out with one ribbon that had blues, browns, and creams in it and used that as my base for all of the other ribbons. I used some blue, brown, cream, grey, and blue ribbon. Some with polka dots, some with stripes and some solid. I also cut them different lengths to add some dimension. I think it turned out really cute and I think she likes it too! Bonus.

I always have fun doing things like this especially when I do not have a "due by" deadline. I can take my time and do these when I am not as busy with other items. What do you think?

New Fabric/New Find Friday #73

I do not usually pick up tee-shirt material but when I saw these two I knew I had to get them up for a few projects that I have in mind. They were on sale and I just want to try out a few ideas that I have. I hope to have more time to work on this before fall so that I can use what I am going to make in late summer and fall.

The fabric on the left is a grey cotton with small flowers printed on it in a yellow/gold ink. The flowers are made up of a lot of small dots. It is very subtle as you can tell from the picture and not my favorite but I think it will be okay. A little pattern that you can only see close up. The white on the right is a cotton as well and sort of looks like it has slubs, parts of the fabric that is thinner and part that is thicker. I have seen a lot of tee-shirts made out of this fabric lately, you know the ones you have to wear tank tops under and usually have a design printed on top. Very interesting texture.

I can't wait to get playing, there are so many things that I want to do and just no time with a full time job and baby! So I stay up until midnight to try to get something done! I hope for more productivity over the weekends to come.

Cocoa Cover

I made this cover a few months ago for a friend who had her baby boy just a few weeks ago. I wanted to make her something neutral since she was waiting to find out what she was having. Surprisingly this is neutral but now that I know she has a boy those blue dots in there stand out.

I know in the beginning she had problems with nursing and might have to be pumping at bit, this would be great to have at work while pumping. You wouldn't have to worry about someone walking in while you are pumping. Maybe it would be a pain to wear but hey it is another use for it.

Christmas in July

Continuing the theme of Christmas in July from the Friday post, here are some Christmas items that I embroidered for a friend this past month. She and her husband have a tradition of buying a stuffed Christmas animal with the year on it to remember when it was given. There were two years that they could not find an animal with the year on it so they got these two guys. She asked me to embroider the year on them so they would not forget.

Well the moose was up first and I had to take his ear apart to get it into the machine. I didn't like this font in numbers as well after it was finished so I went ahead and changed the font on the reindeer's scarf. I like that font much more and of course the scarf was much easier to do than the moose ear.

She also asked me to embroider their names on their stockings. She loves purple and decorates her Christmas tree with purple and silver (or at least she did when we were college roommates). We of course did their names in purple and I think they turned out pretty good.

It is sort of hard to see the names from some angles because of the fluff but actually in this picture it isn't too bad. I hope that she likes how they turned out, they were more challenging than I thought they would be. Maybe because I am still new with my machine.

Hope you are enjoying some fireworks and a day off! I hope to get some things done around the house on my day off.

New Fabric/New Find Friday #72

Like I have said before I don't usually love to buy novelty fabrics, you know those fabrics that are for holidays and with cutesy animals on them. I was at the fabric store a few weeks ago and they had these on sale and I thought, well I guess it isn't bad to have some of these on hand. So here are some for the Fourth of July weekend and some for "Christmas in July". Maybe it will make us feel cool on these HOT days. :)

Now that I have a boy I thought it would be great to have some Cars fabric on hand, this might just be perfect for his first birthday party as he was born in winter and he loves cars, not the movie but the real ones that drive down the street. If not I know so many boys that just love Cars the movie, this would make a cute blanket top.

The patriotic fabric I was thinking might be great to make something for my Father-in-law who was born on flag day or even to make some cute shirts for kids. I was going to work on that this weekend for the 4th but I am not sure I am going to get it done now that we have family in town and lots of fun planned for the holiday weekend.

Have a happy and safe Fourth of July!!!