Thank You for the Award but...

I have decided that from now on, my blog will be an Award Free Blog.

Much as I appreciate being singled out, there are just so many wonderful blogs out there that I think we are ALL winners!

Thank you for your understanding  :)

Birthday Shirt and Patriotic Wreath

We are going to our great-nephew's birthday party tomorrow, he turns 2 already. Seems like only yesterday I made all of his baby gifts - he was the first one I made things for when I got into sewing :)
I saw this great tutorial for an Elmo shirt, and since Kael absolutely ADORES Elmo, I knew it would be perfect for him.

This is the front of the shirt. I had a hard time finding a solid red shirt with no design or writing on the front, so I had to settle for this one with the pocket.  Here is the back:

I used my letter and number stencils and some scrap black fabric to make the "I'm 2" on the back.

When I was making Elmo's face, I sewed each piece on individually. I started with the white for his eyes, then did the orange nose, and finally the black eyes and mouth. I did a tight zig zag stitch around each one (hard to see in the picture). I adhered them with Heat n Bond, but I always like to sew them on too so they will make it through the laundry okay. I did the same thing on the back. I can't wait to see him wearing it tomorrow!

I decided to make a new Fourth of July wreath this year, as the one I made last year was just too small for our front door. Once I saw Courtney's Rag Wreath over at A Diamond in the Stuff, I knew that was what I wanted to make.

The best part of this project is that it was absolutely free!  I had a wreath form in my stash that I had already (mine was made out of pipe insulation too!) and my SIL gifted me with a bunch of fabric recently, so the fabric was free too! The ribbon came off of last year's wreath.

I cut my fabric into strips that were 2 X 12. The pipe insulation is kind of thick, so that's why I made my strips a little longer.  This is an easy project, it just takes awhile to cut all the strips and then tie them onto the wreath.

Thanks to Kirstin and Courtney for their tutorials!

Stencils for Applique

I have been making lots of appliqued onesies, and I wanted to share with you what I have been making. I love to make the onesies with the initials of the baby, or the tie onesie, but I wanted to do something different. While strolling through the aisles at Jo-Anns one day, I came across some stencils and a light bulb went off in my head.... why not use the stencils for my onesies?  Here are a few I have made:

You can see the duck and car stencils I used behind the onesies in this picture!

And for a sweet newborn named Abbigail, I made this:

I found the stencils in the craft paint aisle... one of the packages had 48 stencils in it for around $4.99. Not a bad price (and with a 40% coupon, even better!)  They also come in different sizes too ... the ones I got are about 4 1/2 inch ones, but they come bigger and smaller than that.

They also had packages of alphabet stencils:

I really love this "A" that I made for Abbigail embellished with a little silk rosette that I stitched on.

These are sew easy to do.... just iron some Heat n Bond or Wonder Under to the wrong side of your fabric. Then trace the stencil onto the paper backing, cut out the shape, iron it to the item and then zig zag stitch around it (don't forget to put your freezer paper underneath when you sew - check out my previous post about that here.)

No need to limit yourself to baby items either - you can use this for your toddler or children items too. I also like that they included so many different shapes in the stencil pack - snowman, cats and dogs, nautical items, a birthday cake (which I will be using to embellish a birthday shirt for a soon to be 5 year old!), boy and girl silhouettes, hearts.. the list goes on and on!  So much fun, and so much easier than trying to find shapes on the internet, print them out to the correct size, etc. etc.!

I sure hope you give this a try.  :)


Linked up to:

Kindle Fire Case

For my birthday tomorrow, hubby got me a Kindle Fire. I whipped up this case to keep it in for now. I might change my mind and make something more complex later, but for now, this works!

The tutorial for it can be found here.

Here is the inside:

The fabric is some Michael Miller that I had in my stash that I really love.

Project Notes:

• I used 1/4 inch seam except for topstitching; for that I did about 1/8 of an inch
• It is much easier to sew on your velcro strips before you sew up the sides
• I used Heat n Bond Medium Weight Fusible Interfacing, but if I were to make this again, I think I would use something a little thicker and/or stronger
• To make the curve lay nice and flat, I cut little slits in it prior to turning
• I hate hand sewing, so I hot-glued my button on the front (purely decorative anyway)

Let me know if you make one!

Ruffle Butt!

I don't know why I waited so long to make one of these Ruffled Butt Onesies. They are so adorable, and I can't wait to see a picture of my friend's grandbaby wearing it!

The tutorial for this can be found here.  Since I don't have a serger, I made Option #2.

Appliqued Onesie Tips

I recently came across the most helpful tips I have found in a long time, and wanted to share them with you. Yes, you... if you are out there... I got no comments on my last post, so maybe you haven't been wondering if I fell off the face of the earth!  Ha ha! Oh well, if nothing else, this blog is a great place for me to keep track of my sewing and crafting projects!

Anyway, Terri over at A Creative Princess shared this post about machine applique back in March. I don't know about you, but whenever I have done machine applique on baby onesies in the past, I always had a hard time sewing them. Sometimes the onesie would bunch up, and it was always hard for me to see where I was sewing.

Terri shared two fantastic tips. The first one is to use an open toe foot on your machine when sewing appliques. That is probably common sense, but honestly, I never even thought about it. I just happened to find a clear plastic open toe foot at my local Wal-Mart for around $9.00, and boy has it made sewing easier. Now I can actually see where I am sewing, and it makes it so much easier getting around curves and corners.

The second tip Terri shared was so awesome and amazing and wonderful ... it has made a HUGE difference for me. She uses freezer paper as a stabilizer underneath the applique when she sews it on. All you do is cut a small piece of freezer paper and place it inside the onesie, with the shiny side towards the fabric. You don't need to iron it on or pin it or anything.. it stays in place just fine.

Since I have started using the freezer paper, I have had no problems at all with the onesie bunching up on me at all. Here is what it looks like after you have sewn it on:

This is the inside of my onesie. Notice that you need to have the freezer paper a little larger than your applique. Since you have put the shiny side of the freezer paper towards the fabric, it makes it much easier to tear off when you are done. To help it along, I used my seam ripper and made little tears inside my letter like this:

Here it is with the paper all torn off:

And here is the finished product:

No bunching or binding of the fabric at all. I also played around with the stitches and tried to make a tighter zig zag stitch and I think it looks pretty good!

Here is another one I made:

I cut the dump truck and sign out of some fabric I had and just sewed around it. I even put this little sign on the back of the onesie:

Cute huh?!  (Please ignore the small piece of yellow fabric I had to sew on there, my bobbin thread got all messed up and made a hole in the onesie when I tried to take it off the machine)

I will be using these tips from now on whenever I sew machine applique. Let me know if you give them a try and how they work for you!

Hello!!

Some of you probably wondered if I fell off the face of the earth!  No, I have just been keeping busy since the first of the year. We got a new puppy January 2 and she is ALOT of work!!  I had no idea! She is my first dog ever, so it has been a new experience for me.  Her name is Lulu and she is an absolutely adorable Malti-Poo:

She is 5 months old now and quite a handful. She is a little ball of energy, but she is so much fun and is a great addition to our family.

I have done some sewing projects, but unfortunately the hard drive in my computer crashed a few months ago, so I lost ALL of my pictures. I am still trying to see if I can get someone to try to recover all the stuff from that hard drive. :(

I do have a couple of recent projects I can show you though. I found a great tutorial from the Missouri Star Quilt Company for a self-binding baby blanket. You can find it here. I subscribe to their You Tube channel because they regularly post great sewing and quilting videos... be sure and go check them out. Here is what my finished blanket looks like:

And here is an up-close shot of the stitching:

I just followed along with the video and it was such an easy project. It was neat to be able to use some of the special stitches on my machine that I so rarely use. I bought some flannel on sale recently at Jo-Anns and plan on making three more of these! I think they will make great baby gifts.

I made this cute Car Cozie for our great-nephew:

It is made sort of like the crayon caddies, with pockets to hold their little cars, and a road built right in!  Tutorial can be found here.

For our nephew and his fiance, I made this pillow and then with the leftover scraps, the coasters/holder to match:

The pattern for both of these projects can be found here.

On the crafting side, I made an Easter wreath out of tulle:

I used the instructions found here.

I am currently working on baby projects; seems that there are always people I know having babies! I want to make more of those self-binding blankets, along with some pee pee tee pees, since everyone seems to be having boys!

I will post pictures when I got those projects finished. Hope everyone is doing well - I promise it won't be so long between posts next time!  :)