A special request....

My brother messaged me a week ago to tell me that my niece had an "emergency" request.  They are going to GenCon next week, and she wanted to go as a Jedi and get a "special shirt" to wear.  My machines went into the shop when I was on vacation and weren't back yet, but how can I turn down a request like that?

She requested a pink or purple shirt, and, as luck would have it, I had a pink shirt already in my possession.  So I sent this pic to my brother and asked for my niece to pick which fabric she wanted, and which character or ship she wanted.

She made her pick, but she wanted a Luke Jedi design.  Hmmm....I haven't done a Luke so far....so I said I'd try but would have to look for a picture.  He promptly sent back a Lego Luke minifig picture but said she'd be fine with R2D2 or Darth Vader if it wasn't going to work.

So I punted to plan B to be safe, since I had a deadline.  But I also went to WM and bought a couple more shirts to play around with.  And then I decided she needed a new Tie Fighter, and then I realized that the post office was open an hour later than I thought, so I'd try a Luke (and that shirt is a light purple - I know it reads pink here).  In the end, the box is away and should get to her early next week, so in plenty of time.

As usual.....

....I'm terrible about updating!  There's been some sewing and a lot of crocheting going on in the background, but I haven't updated the blog in six months.  Oops!

I sewed a Fourth of July outfit for my niece, with matching doll skirts.  This came about as a total impulse.  I had purchased fabric last year for two new twirly skirts, then never gotten around to them.  And I was in JAF and randomly found a patriotic tutti fruitti fabric in the clearance section, which sent me to the non-clearance section, where the sale price was actually cheaper than clearance.  That then made me look for coordinates, and I ended up with three fabrics that (mostly) went together.  (This of course also caused me to finally cut out the fabrics I previously bought, but those haven't been stitched yet.)

Since I bought these on impulse, I wasn't sure how much I'd need, which meant of course that I went back and bought another yard of the butterflies two days later.  (Plus more for another skirt....sigh....I have a problem.)  And then came the issue of my serger deciding not to do any gathering, and then my ruffler foot decided the same.  So between my ruffling issue and my fabric bought on impulse, I ended up not ruffling these *quite* as much as I might have otherwise.  (I had to hand gather the tiers.  I remember why I started using the serger, lol.)  And then, naturally, I stitched the trim onto the third tier the wrong way.  Sigh....

So after all my issues, it was sadly Sunday before I finished the outfit, which means that it did not reach my niece in time for today.  However, she'll get it tomorrow, and I'm sure a new outfit is fun even after the Fourth. ;)  In honor of the recent Solo movie, the applique on her tank top is a patriotic Millenium Falcon.  And the skirt was "based on" the Sophia Tiered Skirt from Funktional Threads.

The dolls of course need some love, as well.  These skirts are based on a free pattern, the Moo Skirt from The Sewing Geek.

Hopefully I'll be hearing in another day or two how much she likes her new outfit!

Christmas sewing

Back in 2014, I made a set of Christmas stockings as a wedding gift for my sister and her new husband.  Since then, I made a Christmas stocking for my nephew - just realized that I never blogged it, so here it is.

And so this year I needed to make a new stocking for my new niece.  Kept to the same font, same simplicity.  But decided that purple would go well for a girl.

And then my nephew got a set of new PJs for his gift.  The pants are from KS SFT, and the shirt was embellished to tie it together with the pants.

Time for new appliqued shirts!

So I was told that my niece had requested a PINK shirt with Boba Fett on it.  Well....that kind of started an avalanche of shirts.  True confessions: I tend to buy shirts to applique when I see them on clearance or a really good sale, and I don't always remember what all I have.  So when I went looking, I discovered 14 total shirts, including 2 long-sleeved size 6-6X shirts (current size), 4 tank tops, and 8 short-sleeved size 7-8 shirts.  Then there are the numerous size 7-8 long-sleeved shirts that will not be discussed....

So I started digging through appliques and fabric scraps, and eventually matched templates/fabrics/shirts together.  Nine went the Star Wars route - including 2 Boba Fetts (one is on a tank top).  I'm especially amused by the R2D2 from keyboard fabric.

And then I threw in some random others, just for fun.  It amused me to use a paw print fabric for a paw print applique.  The butterfly is leftovers of a neat print that I used for bias tape to bind a baby sling.  The Pokemon bunny is leftovers from boxers for Things 1&2.  And the skeleton animals are leftovers from a project that hasn't yet been finished.

I sent seven shirts in the first box - both the long-sleeved shirts and 5 short-sleeved.  The rest of the short-sleeved shirts and the tank tops will go in another month or two.

New baby onesies - paw prints!

Somebody at work is having a baby, so I thought that baby onesies would be a great gift, of course.  So I did one with the baby's initial, but then I thought, we're a vet clinic.  Paw prints!  And my new obsession was born....

These are for baby Jay - each one is a different size.

And since it was a great idea, I made one for my nephew, too!  Along with his initial....

I'm thinking these would be great for a vet-related fundraiser item, too....Must ponder this....

New baby gifts

So I'm (as usual) catching up on blogging, in some cases long after the gifts have gone out.  That's okay, right? ;)  Two babies were born earlier in the summer, and these are baby gifts that I made for both.  The first was born to a friend who, along with her husband, practices martial arts.  So naturally I wanted to use that as a focus. First, I used scraps leftover from their wedding pillowcases to make a set of burp cloths.  Then, I pulled out the ninjabread appliques again.  This time, I used one on each onesie.  Add in a onesie with the baby's first initial, and the end!

This picture was taken before finishing each gift completely.  I had made a bunch of burp cloths and showed one of each print, plus the nursing pads I'd finished.

And a closer look at the nursing pads.  I'm now out of the microfleece that I had bought for this ages ago, so the next ones will use Cuddle Dry Microfleece that I bought through a coop.  I'm also now out of PUL, I think, so I'll have to buy some more.  These don't take much, but they turn out really nicely, especially with the lace overlay.  I've had great feedback from some of the people who have received these, so I'll continue to gift them.

This is from a book panel that I bought and stashed probably at least ten years ago.  The new mom loved Care Bears, so I was saving it for her first child.  I'm kind of impressed that I remembered and dug it out! :)

And then a baby sling!  This baby's gender wasn't known ahead of time, so I wanted to make something that could be gender neutral.  I purchased an olive linen blend from JAF and went to work.

I went with the black print for bias binding - both because I thought it'd be fun to have the music print, and because my remaining nylon sling rings were black.  I do think this really sets off the olive, so it was a good choice.  And I have a bunch of the bias tape remaining for future projects.

I sent this along with a print out of instructions and helpful websites for babywearing....I hope that she uses it and likes it.  My sister-in-law told me (much later) that she had LOVED her sling and used it almost daily.

New Star Wars shirts! (And a bonus dinosaur)

So my niece has LOVED her Star Wars shirts, but she's outgrowing them, as children do.  So I kind of got carried away on making her a new set.  Oops!  All of these applique shapes have been seen before, but I changed up the colors (and obviously the sizes).  Darth Vader got a hot pink lightsaber this time, because red wasn't going to cut it on a purple shirt.  

And every little girl should have her own dinosaur, right?  This was the bonus shirt.

I hope she likes her new shirts!  She should still have plenty of good weather for wearing them....

Matching family!

I wanted to send a baby gift to a family which recently welcomed their fourth child, a daughter (they've been alternating boy-girl), and I thought it'd be fun to send something to the older siblings. And then it hit me - they could be quasi-matchy-matchy, which would probably never happen if you were looking for store-bought clothes.  But this is why we sew!

My dino appliques are usually a big hit, so I decided they would be appropriate here, too.  The first set features the darker blue on the boy shirts and the lighter blue on the girls.  This was simply due to not having a single shade that would look good on all the shirts.  (As an aside, it's not easy to find plain, solid color tees at WM for all the sizes I needed!)

For this set, I was able to use a single red fabric for all the shirts, and I think they look pretty good.

I heard that the family loved them! 

PJs

The son of one of my friends had a birthday recently.  Though it was of course cold out, I made him a pair of more summery PJs, as a sign of hope that spring will come.  :)  Plus, if he's anything like my boys, they like to wear summer PJs and burrow into so many blankets that they're sweating.  Goofy boys!

This is a Transformers fabric found at WM on clearance and a tie-dye flannel from JAF on Black Friday.  I like bringing the neckline to the front when I'm using the contrasting color - I think it helps tie the set together better.  This is KS 3042, my TNT woven kiddo PJ pattern.

And for another friend, I'm working on a PJ/lounge set for her.  The pants will be shown later, but I appliqued ninjabread shapes to the front of a purchased shirt to go with it.  I hope that she loves them!

Little bits....

Before Christmas, my husband was attending a white elephant gift exchange as part of a work get-together.  He ultimately decided to take a bottle of homebrew as the gift, but he thought it looked kind of lame, since he'd forgotten to buy a bag to put it in.  I asked how long he had before he had to leave, then brought him a couple of Christmas fabrics from the stash.  He chose this one, and I whipped up a quick lined bottle bag, which we then topped off with a red ribbon tie.  He told me later that the bottle of beer was the hit of the party, and that everyone was surprised and impressed to learn that his wife made the bag, let alone so fast!  (This is why we sew....and keep a stash!)

Thing 2's teacher is due any day with her second child and second girl.  The room moms decided to throw a baby shower for teacher and kids, and so of course I had to contribute some dinosaur appliqued onesies!  But I also thought it would be fun for the older sister to get to "match" her new baby, so I did matching appliques for the little girl.  Unfortunately, WM is down to very few long-sleeved no design shirts, so I ended up with two shirts of the same color - but one is a turtleneck and one a crew neck.

While I had the Jeep fabric out, I also appliqued two onesies with Jeeps, to go in with my sister and brother-in-law's Christmas box.  These are for their first baby.  I hope to be the first one to give them Jeep baby stuff. :)

Appliqued stuff out the wazoo!

So there are always babies being born in my world - some nearby, some farther away.  And with one classmate, one coworker, and two people from my past all having new babies, it was time for another marathon onesie session!  (Yes, some of these are just because I was getting a little onesie applique happy....)  

In the left column, there are four onesies going to the new baby of the child of a family we used to attend Bible study with.  (I still can't believe she's old enough to be married with a baby!  I must be aging...)  The baby's late uncle was apparently very interested in getting a motorcycle, so I made sure to have two motorcycle appliques in the lot.

The column second from left is for a classmate's new baby girl.  Her daddy is a pig farmer, which inspired the pig applique.  I think it's super cute!  I also really like the black dino - it has multi-colored hearts all over. :)

Then the other 3 columns were not specifically intended for anyone - though I did scoop three boyish ones out of the mix to send as a gift to someone for whom I used to babysit.  This is his second baby - again, I feel as though I'm aging!  (But I was only a teenager then, and I figure I'm probably less than ten years his senior, so it's not so bad.)  I'll be keeping the motorcycles, foxes, and pigs in the mixture in the future!

The onesies on the left are for my coworker's baby.  His intended name begins with a "B," and his room is decorated in a fox theme.  And then I just had to throw in a dinosaur.  I mean, come on!  Every little boy needs a dinosaur!

And after all the recent Star Wars love for my niece, I realized that she has surely grown out of the original dinosaur onesies I sent her.  So she needed a new "grown up" dinosaur shirt. :)  I thought that the tonal purple dinosaur would go well with a lime green shirt - the combo seemed very summery to me.

So the red dinosaur applique has been kicking around for about a year now - basically ever since I made Thing 2 his dinosaur shirt.  I had cut this applique out at the same time as the orange one, then decided to go with the orange.  So I finally decided that this red one needed a shirt.  The little girl who inspired the whole dino appliques in the first place is now a year-ish, so I figured that she could use a new dino shirt.  Since the applique was so big, I went with an 18 month size - she can always grow into it!  

And then I just loved the pig applique so much that I wanted to make a bigger version.  A friend from my grad school days still does research with pigs, and her little girl is turning two later this summer.  So I thought this would be perfect for her.  It turned out really cute, and I'm already trying to come up with other things to use it on!

More Star Wars clothes!!!

 It's been about nine months or so since I made my niece the girly Star Wars shirts.  And apparently she is outgrowing them, so my brother requested some new ones.  Well, how can I say no?  So I bought several different colors of the very same shirt (Garanimals brand - short sleeved toddler girl's shirt - just a bigger size this time) and got to work.  This time I went for some Star Wars Lego images, which I just thought were awesome.

Meet Yoda:

And R2D2:

And you can't have Star Wars without Darth Vader (with the appropriate colored lightsaber):

All the shirts together - I love how they turned out!

Baby gifts

Two people I know just had their first babies, so it was time to pull out some onesies for embellishment!  The onesies in the left column are all long-sleeved 0-3 m size, and the others are all short-sleeved 3-6 m.  The blue shirt in the bottom is a 24m, for my niece.  I had some fun with these!  The red and green dinosaurs are for one friend's baby boy, and all the girl onesies are for the other friend's new baby girl.

I also made a baby sling for the baby girl.  Her mother's favorite color is blue, so I found a sky-blue linen look fabric at JAF and made a single layer sling, edging the sides with homemade bias tape from a tonal turquoise butterfly print.  I think it turned out super cute!  I hope that she likes it!  The sling rings were passed on by a member of my online sewing group, so this is my first time using real sling rings, as opposed to steel ones from the hardware store.

Some applique!

My church adopted two needy families for Christmas this year.  We grabbed three wishes to fulfill, and one was for a shirt/blouse for a toddler girl in a 2T size.  I got a plain black T-shirt and a purple waffle-knit henley, and I thought it would be fun to add a winter applique to the black shirt.  The applique design is from etsykim.  While I was at it, I pulled out the purple T-shirt that I'd previously bought for my niece - because if you're making one, you might as well make two, right?

I think that they turned out really cute, and I hope that both little girls love them!

More dinosaur appliques!

An online friend had seen my previous dinosaur applique projects, and she commissioned me to make some dino onesies and matching burp cloths for a new mom in our sewing group.  She provided the cloth diapers and the fabrics, and I did the work.  I love her fabric choices!  These are the burp cloths with dino prints onesies with batiks that go with them.

And then a closer view of the dinosaurs.  I love how they look with these batiks!  I didn't really fussy cut them - not easy to do when you're working from the back of the fabric.  But some of these are adorable with how they turned out!

And then, since I've been having so much fun with these dinos, I volunteered to make two sets to send off as door prizes in a clinic celebration in honor of World Breastfeeding Day.  These fabrics are all scraps from my stash.  I think they made great dinosaurs!

Appliqued onesies are quickly going to become my baby gift of choice....

More applique

So when I made the previous dinosaur-appliqued onesies, I thought to myself that my niece really needed a set, too!  So I got a set of 18 month Child of Mine onesies and enlarged my dino appliques a bit.  I really like how these turned out!  There's just something about dinosaur shapes in girl colors that is unexpected and really fun, I think.

And then I decided that my niece also needed some girly Star Wars shirts (since my brother is, in fact, the world's biggest Star Wars fanatic).  So I got 18 (white) and 24 (pink) month Garanimals shirts (WM) and appliqued a Tie fighter and an X-wing fighter on them, using leftovers of the dress fabrics. I think these turned out pretty awesome, too!  :)

Playing Catch-up

We've had two recent girl birthday parties that either one or all of us were invited to.  I thought that girly PJ eaters were in order for both occasions, and so I cut out two nearly identical ones.  (The zipper color was the only difference.)  I'm really pleased with this one and think it's one of the cutest I've made so far!  (And I'm amused that for the birthday party which we attended as a family, I finished the PJ eater in the car - stuffing and stitching shut.  Yep, procrastination pays....)  I'm definitely keeping track of who gets PJ eaters now - this are great birthday gifts, but I've got to make sure I don't accidentally give two to the same kid!

And Thing 2 was in love with the dinosaur appliques I made as a baby gift, so I had to make him his own dinosaur appliqued shirt - with more boyish colors, of course! :)  He loves orange, so I thought this batik-like print was perfect for him.  I enlarged the dino drawing until it looked vaguely appropriate (nothing scientific - just eyeballing), then traced it onto Heat-n-Bond Lite and fused it in place.  This is another which has been stitched on with straight-stitching around the edges, and I don't remember putting any Fray-Check on it.  But I've had to wash it four or five times by now, and so far, no fraying is noticeable.  This has already become a favorite!  I can see that I'll have to watch for other fun applique designs!

A baby gift!

Oh, this one was so much fun!  A former student and her husband were expecting a baby, and I'm told they wanted a dinosaur-themed nursery.  Unfortunately for them, it was apparently impossible to find girly dinosaur baby stuff.  And this, my friends, is why we sew!

Enter the stash....The dinosaurs on blue flannel in the background was a Black Friday purchase from a few years ago.  If I remember right, it was long enough ago that I intended it for toddler bedding.  Oops!  Well, now part of it became a crib sheet.  The dino flannel to the left was a thrift store find, and now it's a pack-n-play sheet (I stalked the baby registry to verify that they had or intended to purchase both a crib and a pack-n-play.)  Then the onesies were the really fun part. :)

People always give new parents newborn or 0-3 month clothing, so I figured that something a little bigger was a better plan.  I bought a three pack of plain white, short-sleeved onesies (Child of Mine brand - I think that's Carter's brand for Wal-Mart) in 3-6 month size.  Then I searched the internet for uncomplicated pictures of dinosaurs.  If I remember correctly, my google search was "free dinosaur stencil" - and I found these, which had been used for freezer paper stenciling on an art smock.  Awesome!  The blue and purple mottled prints were leftovers from the Christmas stockings I made for my sister-in-law and niece, and the pink is a fat quarter I found at JAF.

After printing out the patterns in several different sizes (this was totally not methodical - more trial and error), I traced the shapes onto the paper side of Heat-n-Bond Lite and then fused the adhesive to the fabric.  (Make sure to fuse it to the WRONG side of the fabric - I wasn't thinking and screwed up my first applique.)  Next, I cut out the shapes and then fused them to the onesies.  I wasn't sure whether I could get away without stitching them in place, but after consulting my online sewing group, I decided it would be better to stitch them down.  I didn't want to do satin-stitching on these, so instead I simply stitched a line around the shape, just inside the edges.  I also applied Fray-Check to the raw edges, just in case....I think these are hilariously cute, and I'm definitely going to make more in the future!