Fashionista Applique

A while back I had a sweet momma message me to make a ninjago shirt for her son, but she also wanted a shirt for her daughter that could coordinate with some of her pieces from her new Matilda Jane Co. - Serendipity Line favorites. Luckily she already had the perfect color of tshirt that she sent to me along with a few of the mesh bags that MJC likes to package their items in, one of them from the line last fall even had a nice button on it that I was able to use. I already had all of these fabrics here - one is a great match for the line (its the blue that's the main part of the purse) and the shoe fabric is one of my all time favorite fabrics too. I love the sweet result of it & hope she does too!

And here is the "Jay" Ninjago shirt for her little boy too! 

 

Thanks for your order! 

Upcycle that Applique!

We are a family that LOVES the St Louis Cardinals. My husband and boys have almost entire drawers full of cardinals shirts, but my daughter has 1 girly cardinals t shirt and its almost too small (well she has a few hand me downs from the boys... but she doesn't leave home in them). :) 

A while ago I started to attempt to make her an upcycled dress out of recycled cardinals shirts from my husbands pile of shirts that might have a hole or small stain on them - the beauty of upcycling one of his shirts is that chances are really good that I can just cut around the bad part. Weeeeellllllll.... summer is really here and I just haven't found the time, energy or confidence in myself to finish this dress. 

But I was looking at this one section of it that had an applique on it vs a screen print tshirt. I also knew that I had purchased a really cute, but simple navy and white stripe tank top from Old Navy this spring, but hadn't figured out what it pair with it or to applique on it. Yesterday it struck me to put the two items together. This is the result! I love it. :) 

What I did is just cut a piece of fusible webbing, ironed it on to the back of the applique, cut out the shape I liked, laid it right on top of the tank, ironed it on w/ the steam setting and then used a straight line stitch around the edges to hold it down. :) I also used some fray check to keep the raw edges nice. 

It took about 30-45minutes. Quick & easy. MUCH simpler & faster than any other appliques I've done for about the last year! 

GO Cards!

Now I still need to make that dress & have that baseball fabric I mentioned before to do something with too. Oh well, she does have a pair of super cute red, ruffled shorties to wear with it too. 

More fun custom appliques!

I had a couple of fun requests lately for customs. 

The first is a set of Big Sister/Big Brother shirts for an old friend that's going to be announcing her 3rd baby soon. Congrats again friend! We thought it would be fun to have a bit of coordination in the shirts but since she has 1 daughter and 1 son, well we'd give them boy/girl options. So I used the same green/white dot fabric and then the turquoise & red gingham's are the same vintage fabric different colorways.  I've been hoarding the baseball fabric for something for my daughter... but thought I'd share a little corner of it for this sweet little boy. :) 

Then I had another customer whose planning a trip to Disney. She bought the cutest Minnie ruffled shorties from Loves Me Not Clothing Co. see HERE and wanted something casual to wear with them. I was able to put this together for her daughter and then we did a Mickey for her son too. I used my cricut expression with a Mickey cartridge to cut out the shapes and letters. The best part is I was worried at first about how to get the size ratio of the letters to mouse correct, I'd totally forgotten that there are options for each letter to be cut into the mouse. Worked out perfect!

I hope they have a magical trip next week!

Lalaloopsy Birthday Shirt

I recently had a friend contact me and ask me if I could make a shirt for her little girl's 5th birthday. She's got a cute Lalaloopsy Theme - complete with a Lalaloopsy costume picked out for her, BUT... just in case it was too hot or she gets tired of it my friend wanted something for her to wear that still went along with the theme. I was thrilled that she asked me to make something for 2 reasons - # 1 I love to do these & help people find the right shirt, #2 because I think Lalaloopsy dolls (big, mini, soft, medium... all of them) are so darn cute. :)

Here's what I came up with after she said she wanted something with a doll holding a balloon & some buttons on it. She mentioned that one of her daughters favorites was the Sugar Crumbs doll (if you've seen some of my other Lala appliques you'll note that in the past I've just put fabrics together that I liked) so this time I did a pretty close remake of the original working with what I had on hand & could find. I did use real buttons & hand stitched them all on + hand stitching for the mouth - all of which prompts me to really recommend a wash on gentle & line dry (which I always recommend anyway). 

I hope she likes it!

A little something for the boys...

I have posted before how my boys are obsessed with the new Lego Ninjago series... well I'd been promising them Ninjago Shirts for a while, so I finally got around to making them... which then has resulted in some more orders of them.

I'm finding that the little details on these, combined with having the kids home for summer (no preschool) is making it take a bit longer to get my projects done. But I'm starting to get back into a groove.

Here are the ones I've done so far...
1.) Jay (my son)

2. Kai (my son)



3. Zane (customer)

4. Jay (customer) 

I've got some more orders for more Jay & Kai - those seem to be the favorites of all the kids. :)

My boys request to wear them multiple times per week - looks like I need to find time to make more for them too!

If you'd like to order one - here's a link to my custom information, though I currently charge $20+ship for these because of the extra little details on them. :) CUSTOM SHIRTS

Preppy Baby Birthday Shirt

A friend asked if I could make a shirt for her daughter's first birthday. She had picked this cute Preppy Party theme -

from Birthday In A Box


So once she decided how she wanted the colors used (bright pink shirt, lime whale, and light pink "1") I was able to get to work.

I came up with this

I saw a few pictures after & she looked adorable with some cute leggings & a tutu!
Happy 1st Birthday Sweet Girl!

Oh baby! Fun & simple gift

When I had my daughter I was all about wanting some girly things (obviously - you've seen her room). But at the same time I knew it didn't mean going out and buying ALL new baby things. One thing that I reused was the burp cloths for the boys - they were this great soft cotton cloth diaper (mostly Gerber brand) - I took them all (about 18) soaked them in bleach for a few days to get them nice and white, and then added fun fabrics to them all (pinks/flowers/etc - girly). 

Well once I started sewing more I wanted to make some as gifts for friends. Imagine my surprise the first time I went to the store to buy some new cloth diapers (since I wasn't going to use recycled from my own kids :p ) and the quality felt horrible. They were scratchy & thin. YUCK. So I started looking for better options. I've found 2 good methods I think. 

*The first is to use a bath towel/toweling fabric as the plain side and then get cute/pretty flannel for the other side. They are both soft and absorbent.
*The other option I've tried with good luck is to buy some pre-quilted fabric - there is the solid white that just has pre-quilted diamonds that I use for the back side, and then I have found some really cute pre-quilted/patchwork quilt in baby fabrics (mixture of prints/solids, flannel, chamois) - this really gives a boutique look.

I do plan on doing a full on tutorial soon - but for now will just share a few quick pictures of a recent baby boy gift set. I loved this car print flannel and then found that it was a pretty simple design to just add a coordinating knit fabric applique car to a onesie. I think this set turned out adorable!

What I did was cut out 10x20 rectangles (2 on the flannel print, 2 on a towel)

then sew the edges using about a 1/2 in. seam allowance w/ the right sides facing each other - but be sure to leave about a 3 in opening (or however big you need to pull the whole thing through). 

Trim the edges and corners and pull right side out. Tuck in the opening and top-stitch the entire rectangle with a 1/4 in allowance - sometimes I will double top-stitch w/ an additional 1/2" allowance -but this last time ran out of time.

Next time I'll take pictures along the way. I really ought to just make up a stash since they are cute and sweet little gifts. :) 

 If you can sew a straight (or semi - straight line) then you can make a burp cloth for a gift or bulk up your own stash because... well, spit happens with babies and you can never have too many. ;)