A Northwoods Outfit: Cargo Shorts, Canoe Applique Shirt, and Bucket Hat Made With Michael Miller Plaid

While browsing on line fabric stores a few months ago I came I came across this madras plaid fabric and just fell in love with it.  (It's shore thing, by Michael Miller, and you can bye it here at fabric.com).  I thought it would be the perfect fabric for an outfit to make for my 3 year old for our North woods vacation in Wisconsin.

I used McCall'sM6495 to make the cargo shorts.  I made the reversible hat with the Scout Bucket Hat pattern from youcanmakethis.com

I found this canoe applique pattern  off Etsy from Applique Cafe, and then I added Landon's name to personalize the shirt.  I purchased the navy blue shirt from Target, Circo brand.

And here's pictures of my handsome little man showing of his new outfit in Gramma's back yard.

I also made a romper for Baby Austin out of this same fabric, but I'll have to save that for another blog post.

Big Bro and Little Bro Appliqué Embroidery Shirts for My 2 Boys

Now that Baby Austin is almost a month old, I am starting to get into a normal routine and am starting to have more time for crafting and blogging.  And I am so excited to show off my two boys with today's project -- Big Bro T-shirt and matching Little Bro onesie.

I purchased the embroidery program on Etsy for $2.99 from JoyousEmbroidery and the gingham fabric came from Warehouse Fabrics.  I made big bro 5" x 7" for the toddler shirt and the lil bro 4" x 4" for the baby onesie.

And here's a picture of my two boys showing off their new shirts.  Landon is such a proud big brother and is so happy to introduce Baby Austin to everybody.  (I still need to work on the art of getting a toddler and a baby to both look at the camera at the same time)

Fire Truck Birthday Shirt Embroidered for Landon

Today I spent my birthday playing with my birthday present -- my new embroidery machine.  I wanted to try doing a combination of appliqué and embroidering on the embroidery machine, and thought a t-shirt for Landon's 3rd birthday would be the perfect opportunity.  So I searched the internet and found a reasonably priced design at Stitcheroo Designs that incorporated the number 3 into a flame with a firetruck.

Here is the T-shirt I made:

Here's a closer look at the design:

The embroidery machine program file can be purchased here.   (The purchase actually includes the design for numbers 1 - 6!)

I also found this tutorial from the blog Love from Texas that walked me step by step through the applique embroidery process.

Lesson learned from this project is that I need to use a little stiffer stabilizer (like a medium weight cutaway) in place of the tear away stabilizer that I used on this project.  This would clean up the puckering that I got at the bottom of the t-shirt.

Considering it was my first appliqué project on the embroidery machine, I am quite pleased with the results.  I can't wait to surprise Landon with this birthday surprise tomorrow morning.

Valentine's Day Tie Appliqué Shirt for Baby Boy

This weekend I welcomed the newest addition to my craft room -- a new embroidery machine.  My wonderful husband bought it as an early birthday present.  My birthday isn't until the end of the month, but he knew that with the baby coming I would have lots of opportunities to use it since I have been planning on working on burp clothes, bibs, and baby blankets.  So I spent the afternoon learning how to use the new machine.  And I even got an embroidery project done.

Here it is -- a Valentine's shirt with a tie appliqué for a baby boy.

I've been wanting to make a tie appliqué shirt, and decided to use the embroidery machine to make it a Valentine's themed shirt.  I found the template for the tie at the blog Crap I've Made.  I copied and pasted the template into a word document so I could make it a little bit bigger.

I used the embroidery machine to make the words "Be Mine" before cutting the tie shape.  Then I used paper back fusible webbing (also known as heat and bond) to adhere the tie onto the black shirt and used a zig zag stitch on my regular sewing machine to give the edges of the tie a finished look.  Here's a close up.

I think I still might add some suspenders and a few hearts to make it more festive, but considering I spent most of the day getting a feel of the new embroidery machine and figuring out how all the features worked, I am pretty happy with the product.

And here is my new addition to my craft room - the Brothers PE770.  I was very impressed with how easy it was to use.  I literally opened the box and was embroidering 20 minutes later.  

And with that, I'm going to get back to crafting.  I've got to finish dressing up this t-shirt.  Until next time, have a Sew Scrappy Day!