New Look #6195

I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of this pattern. I first used it back in 2008 for these two smocks.

And here are a few more favorites I’ve made in the last couple of weeks. Can you tell it’s back to school time? Been making loads o’ clothes for the girls. Only 20 days till school starts. Oh yea, I’m counting.

I did version “B” this time with elastic at the neckline for the front and back. I prefer this version over all the others.

I love this black and white seersucker with the applique of my ‘Scribbled Mum’ flower.  I see these smocks all over the children’s clothing websites for loads of money. Mine cost $5 worth of fabric. Plus 45 minutes of sewing and embroidery, which really, my time is priceless. Worth millions. At least that’s what I tell my hubby and kids.

This turquoise polka dot version is darling as well, but my daughter wishes I had used the elastic at the neckline here as well. It’s kinda ‘loose’ on her.

I think this pattern is out of print now but there are a thousand other smock patterns just like this one. So stylin, so easy. I even wrote a review of it YEARS ago on pattern review. Click here.

Look how much my girl has grown up? It makes me a wee bit sad how fast the time is going. She was just 7 years old in the below picture. Where does the time go?

Monogrammed Pillows without an Embroidery Machine

My Bernina 830 is still in the hospital. She’s gonna make it, but it’s going to be a few more days on life support. Phew. 

And I really needed her this week to help me make some graduation and wedding gifts for some special ladies. I love giving something monogrammed as a gift—totally personal and unique. However, what’s a gal to do when she has no embroidery machine? Heaven forbid I do something with just my regular ol’ Bernina 131 and my two hands. Gulp.

I printed out some letters in bold at about a 600-700 point font size using Gill Sans Ultra Bold font, flipped them over,  and traced them on the back. You always trace the letters onto the Heat n Bond lite backwards, so that when you iron them on, they are front facing.

Follow the manufacturer’s directions for the Heat n Bond, pick a nice dark fabric in a solid (or nearly solid) that will stand out on the background fabric, and iron onto your fabric.

This next step is optional because this stuff is permanent so you don’t need to sew the letter down, but I like it super secure and I love topstitching. I went around each letter 3-4 times with a straight stitch on my sewing machine. And for heaven’s sake, please don’t sew completely straight. You want that scribbled look. My scribbled embroidery designs are my best sellers for a reason—nobody wants that perfect look, at least not all the time.

How cute are these chevron striped fabrics from Riley Blake? Yummy and oh so trendy. Premier Prints also has the same design. Click here.

After you iron/sew the letters on, you are ready to make the fabric into pillow, preferably with an invisible zipper. Follow my instructions here if you are desperate.

The hot pink damask is from Amy Butler. I need more pink in my house.

I realized as I made these pillows that it’s 2012 and I graduated from high school in 1992. Yup, 20 years ago. I’m getting to be that nice middle aged lady. Only I don’t feel so nice. Nor middle aged.

I love these little cellophane bags from XPedx for gifts. After all, the fabric is cuter than any wrapping paper—I want them seen.

I survived my afternoon without my embroidery machine. Sewing like a pioneer women (sort of, ok not really) makes me tired.

Upcycling

Upcycling has to be the dumbest word ever. But I don’t care, it makes me sound environmentally friendly when really I am just cheap and trying to give new life to old clothes. This pair of khakis belonged to my 7 year old daughter last year. She wore them during 1st grade. At the end of 1st grade they naturally became too short.

So I set them aside in my sewing room knowing that I would cut them into shorts or capris for her and add some fun embroidery to give them a new life. Well, they sat in my sewing room. All summer long. I finally got around to giving them a make over last week. 

I cut them off to capri length first. Then I added bias trim to the bottom that was leftover from this quilt. And to cover the stains on the knees I added these cute “paint splashes” applique designs with the perfect Ta-Dot fabric by Michael Miller. I even added an extra one to the hip area, because well, the fabric is oh-so cute.

Total time? Probably a good 1 1/2 hours, too long in my book. I was excited for my now 2nd grade daughter to arrive home from school and try on her new capris!

And guess what, they didn’t fit anymore.  Color me angry. That’s what I get for trying to be frugal.

Screw frugality, that’s my new motto.

But I made her squeeze into them long enough to snap a few photos before giving them to  my friend Allison’s kindergartener.

Technicolor Vine Machine Appliqué

I remember the first time I saw machine appliqué. I was standing in a horrific line to get fabric cut at Joann's Fabrics (gag) and looked over at the Viking machines and one was whirling away at an embroidery design. An appliqué embroidery design. I had never seen that done before and I instantly loved it. Fast forward 3 years later, to now.
I’ve had a tutorial before about appliquéing letters, but here’s another appliqué tutorial, with a few more instructions this time. This time the sample item is my Technicolor Vine appliqué design.
1. Hoop your fabric and stabilizer. (duh) Load the thread color you want to use for your final satin stitching, in this case, yellow.
2. Sew the placement stitch. It’s hard to see here because without bionic eye balls because its yellow. Sorry.

3. Cut a scrap of fabric large enough to cover the placement lines, usually just a rectangle. Now you can either spray it temporary spray glue (I like 505) but I actually prefer to just starch the heck out the rectangle. Just use heavy duty spray starch that you would use for any other clothing item. (Assuming you iron, I don’t.) Lay the heavily starched square over the placement lines and sew the second stitching.

4. Remove hoop from machine and trim away excess yellow fabric with small curved appliqué scissors, $5 bucks at WalMart. DO NOT REMOVE THE fabric from the hoop!!

5. Replace hoop, sew the tack down line. This is usually a wavy zig-zag or just another straight line, depending on the design. (There may or may not be two tackdown lines sewn. Usually just one though.)

6. Sew final stitching, usually a satin stitch, but not always. Sometimes I use different types of cover stitching* like a criss cross pattern of Xs, as seen in my geranium design or even just a fancy swirly cover design, like my boutique label. But for this design, a regular ol’ satin stitch was used, as seen below.

7. Finish the embroidery process. In this case, one more leafy couple and then the stem.

8. Sew up your pillow!

*Here are some different cover stitch lines other than satin stitching.
Here’s kind of a butterfly edge (orange thread), with a zig-zaggy stem stitch (green thread) on these circle appliqués.

Here’s a criss-cross of Xs on the main petals (orange stitching) of  this geranium applique.

That’s it my cyber-embroidery buddies! Machine applique is super easy, so give it a try.

Scripture Tote Bag

Hallie has been needing a new scripture tote bag. She grew out of her old scripture bag made by my fabulous (now far away friend) Candy of Candy Argyle Designs. So I made Hallie a new bag for church. While I was contemplating how to decorate her bag (yes, I think about these boring details) I had an embroidery customer email me asking if I had an CTR designs. CTR stands for Choose The Right which is basically the theme for all Sunday School children of the LDS faith. Well, I didn’t have such a design, but I said I could quickly make one. So being the brilliant gal that I am, I put those two ideas together—a CTR Scripture Bag! If you’d like to buy the design, click here.
If you’d like to make this scripture, bag you’ll need to cut:
Main body: 1 piece, 18”x11” of canvas,
Top strips: 2 pieces, 2”x11” each
Cotton batting to interface for structure: 1 piece, 21”x11”
Lining: : 1 piece of lightweight cotton, 21”x11”
Straps: You’ll need 2 pieces of 1-inch handbag webbing 19” each.
Fabric to cover straps: Cut 2 pieces of lightweight cotton 3”x19”
That should be it for your supplies!
I’m too lazy to type here all my steps, but trust me, it’s easy.  Like 30-minutes easy for this speedy sewer and maybe 1 hour for those without the Speedy-Sewer-Super Power. Just google “how to sew a tote bag”. But if you’d read this far, you obviously already know how to sew and don’t need no stinkin’ directions.
On the other side I added my Boutique Tag with her name, and voila, cute and chic scripture bag for lil’ miss Hallie.

How to Machine Appliqué

I just listed a new embroidery design in my shop. It’s an appliqué of letters with some cute Marimekko flowers adorning each letter. Have I ever blogged about how much I love Marimekko fabric? Well, I should because Marimekko is a staple in the modern design world. And has been for 40 (or is it 50?) years now. Yummy stuff.  I want every pillow pictured here on the right.
Anyway, here is a quick tutorial on how to appliqué by machine.
First, hoop your fabric and sew the first stitching—this is calling the placement line. I don’t have a photo of this, sorry. Not all designs come with a placement line, although I think they should. The appliqués in my shop do because I am fancy.
Second, take a scrap of cotton, heavily starch it, and lay it over the first stitching. Make sure it covers the entire stitching area. If there is a hole to cut out for a letter “e” like here, I would carefully cut a little slit in the fabric now, then lay the fabric back over the stitching line. It is very difficult to cut out the little slit later after it has been sew down. Ask me how I know. (Ruined many items this way by cutting through all the layers of fabric.) See the little slit in the center of the “e”? Now you’ll sew the 2nd stitching, called the tackdown.

Now remove the hoop from the machine (do not remove the fabric from the hoop!!!) and carefully cut away the excess fabric using some cheap little applique scissors. I use some curved fiskars that I got at Wally-Mart for $5. Try to get as close as you can without cutting the stitches, duh. If you snip a stitch (or two) it’s all good. Replace the hoop, stitch out the 3rd stitching, as seen below. This is kind of a zig-zaggy stitch to cover most of your frayed edges.

The 4th stitching will be the final satin stitching, seen below. This will be the only stitching that will actually show. The bare spots you see are where the flowers will be stitched out. Good designs always remove unnecessary bulky stitching underneath. If not, you’ll actually see the ‘bump’ underneath your final stitched design. Not to mention it will be thick and stiff in those areas. Ok, enough about that.

Now you are ready to stitch out your cute little Marimekko flowers. All done! Well, with the embroidery part.

I decided to make all my cute little linen squares into a banner. How cute did my linen ‘celebrate’ banner turn out with all the little Marimekko flowers? I sure love it.
 
the final product: