Big Brother/Little Sister

I have not blogged in a long, long while, but that does not mean that I have not been busy creating new things.  In fact, I have been so busy with stuff for my Etsy shop that I have not kept up with the blogging side of things.  Never fear!  I am back, and have several topics I am eager to cover which include fascinating topics such as: digging to the bottom of my scary pile of fabric, making cloth napkins for kindergarteners, and making new backdrops for my Etsy shop.  Today though, I'm going to show off a fun custom order I recently finished.

I recently attended my twenty year high school reunion (how can it possibly have been that long?) and reconnected with an old friend.  Her sister is expecting a baby girl and has a three year old boy who loves cars, trucks, and things that go.  Mom has a thing for lady bugs, and my friend asked if I could make a big brother/little sister set for the kids that included lady bugs, some sort of vehicle, and to do them fall colors on long sleeve shirt and onesie.  She wanted them to coordinate, and left it up to me to somehow make it work. 

I found a lady bug design and a tractor design that were each cute, but we wanted to put a ladybug into the tractor somehow.  Here are the original designs:

I have used my editing software for lots of minor things like combining designs, taking parts out of designs, and adding text.  What I had not done before was to overlap the designs, and then take away the stitching that would be covered by another part of the design.  It ended up being much more straight forward than I thought it would be, and once I had the sizing and positioning figured out, it was fairly simple.  I did have to do a little cleaning up of the proposed design, but overall, the program worked very well.

From the ladybug design, I kept just the red ladybug.  Then I flipped him around to face the other direction.  Then I sized him down to fit inside the tractor and moved him into position.  I then used the editing software to omit any of the stitches where the tractor overlapped the ladybug.

I think both shirts turned out really cute.  I love that they can stand on their own, but that they are even cuter together.  I hope the mom-to-be and both of her kids like these.

Both shirts together.

I could not find a onesie and a shirt the exact same color in the sizes I needed, so I went with complimentary colors and then used the orange and green on the opposite shirts.  I apologize for how these are hanging a little wonky.  I have fixed that problem (more on that soon), but the shirts are already on their way to my friend.

Just the little sister onesie. 

I used various shades of orange for the lady bugs to coordinate with the brother's shirt.  Also, bright red made it look oddly Christmas-y.

Big brother shirt.  My son, age 5, saw this and loved it.  He was very disappointed that it was not for him.

The ladybug looks so happy to be driving the tractor.

Close-up of the designs together to see how nicely they compliment each other.