Cutest Baby Dress Ever!

When I came across the Criss Cross Dress Tutorial over at Melly Sews, I immediately fell in love with it and knew I had to make one. Look how adorable this is:

(Photo from Melly Sews)

Did I have a baby girl to make this for? Nope. Did I make one anyway? Yep!!

It really is an easy dress to sew, and doesn't it look so sweet on Melly's model?

I loved the seersucker fabric she used, so I followed suit. I appliqued a flower on the front of my dress.

As it turns out, a friend of my sister just had a baby, so I will gift it to her!

You can make the ruffly bloomers to match, and I will admit they were a bit of a challenge for this newbie sewer, but I think they came out alright. There is a link to her post on how to make them at the bottom of the post for the dress. 

Here is the front of the dress:

and here is the back:

Love, love, love it! Thanks so much Melly for such a wonderful and easy tutorial.

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:

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!

Baby Girl Bling

I've been wanting to make a cute baby girl onesie ever since I made the little tie onesies for boys:

So I came up with this:

I've seen these little necklace onesies all over blogland, but had never tried one before. It was so quick and easy to do.

I used Tulip  Soft fabric paint. For the pink necklace I used an eraser on the end of a pencil for the dots; for the purple one, I used the end of a paintbrush! The little cross is an iron-on I found at Jo-Anns.

I will definitely be making more of these!

Easy Baby Blanket

I came up with an easy baby blanket the other day that I wanted to share with you.  If you need a baby shower present in a hurry, or just want to make a quick blanket for a little one, this project is for you!

I used a package of flannel receiving blankets from my stash. You can easily find these blankets at Target or Wal-mart, they come 4 to a package and are color coordinated and are usually around $10 or so. Mine were 30 X 30 in size. You could use these pre-made blankets or buy some baby flannel at the fabric store and cut them to size; I just used what I had on hand.

After choosing two I liked, I decided to personalize it by appliqueing baby Evan's name on it. I used my handy-dandy alphabet letters I found at Hancock Fabrics:

and some red cotton fabric I had in my stash. Once I fused the letters onto the front of the blanket, I simply zig-zag stitched around the letters to secure them:

Once that was done, I put the blankets pretty sides together and stitched a 1/4 seam all the way around, leaving an opening for turning. Make sure you trim your corners.

I then turned it, pressed it good with a hot iron and top-stitched all the way around using red thread (this will close the opening you made for turning).

It did not take me very long to make and I think it came out really cute. Here are a few more photos:

Sometimes these pre-purchased receiving blankets are not really square, so you may need to square them up before you start sewing.

If I left anything out, or you have any questions, feel free to leave me a comment or send me an e-mail (azbelle3@yahoo.com).  Happy Sewing!

I'm linking up to:

Crayon Roll and Matching Tote

I'm still busy sewing stuff for the upcoming craft show. While I was at Jo-Ann's awhile back (my home away from home LOL!) I saw these small tote bags and the idea hit me... why not do an applique on the front and then use the same fabric to make a crayon roll.. and then throw in a coloring book. So that is what I did. Here is how the first one turned out:

The tote bags came in packages of 3 and I bought 2 of them, so I've got 5 more of these to make.