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.

Daisies and Dragons for Dorothy

I'm a little slow in blogging some of my finished projects, so I'm going to combine two things I have recently made for my daughter.

First, I embellished a skirt to go with this daisy shirt that I made in the Spring to go with a pair of crazy striped pants I bought for $1.  The pants are too hot for summer, so I bought a knit skirt that looks like denim to go with the shirt.  To make the skirt and shirt look like they actually go together, I sewed on some little white daisy trim to the bottoms of the ruffles.  It was so quick and easy to do and makes such a big difference.  I just adore this little outfit now and keep grabbing it out of her closet every time it is clean.

She was not in a cooperative mood for pictures, but making bubbles with a hand mixer slowed her down a bit.

Not the greatest picture, but you can see (almost) the entire thing.

Dorothy is currently in a Puff the Magic Dragon phase and I saw some adorable dragon fabric at the store a couple of weeks ago and had to have it.  It was a home dec fabric, but was 100% cotton, so despite it saying dry clean only, I decided to go for it.  Even better, it was on clearance.  The kids were invited to a pirate themed birthday party, so the day before the party I decided that I need to finally get the dress made so she could wear it to the party the next day.  For some reason, pirates and dragon go together in my head.

I think it turned out very cute and she didn't have any sheared dresses yet for this summer. 

I have a couple more things that I want to make for her, but I better get on it or summer will be over before she can wear them.

The Big Cheese

I needed some children in different sizes than my own to model some clothes for my Etsy shop.  A mom from Malcolm's school was nice enough to loan me her children for a little bit to take some pictures of them in the clothes I had made.  (Aren't they super cute kids?)  Their mom asked if I would be able to make shirts for the kids for their trip to Disney that was in about two days.  I wasn't sure, but after some quick checking, decided that I could get them done in time.  The parents had not told the kids they were going to Disney yet, and they are going to have them open up the shirts as a surprise as to where they are going.  I think they turned out pretty cute and I hope the kids like them.

Ahoy!

I made this shirt for Malcolm to match some seersucker shorts my mom bought him.  When we were looking at designs for his birthday shirt, he saw this ship and really got excited about it and I was happy to finally have a design that I could use to match the shorts that were sitting here.  We have tickets to go on a tall ship that sails out on Lake Michigan where my friend works as a pirate, so I think I'll have him wear it for that and for an upcoming pirate themed birthday party.

He cooperated to stand and let me take his picture, but he would not cooperate to look at the camera.  Oh well, I really just wanted a picture of the shirt anyway.

Does it come in Purple?

When I made the orange dress with a dinosaur for Dorothy, My roommate from college showed it to her daughter, who asked the obvious question, "Does it come in purple?"  For you, Anna, it does.

I am really loving the light purple with medium and dark blue color combination.  My only minor complaint is that due to the pattern on the dinosaur, it is a little hard to see his eye.  Next time, I'll try to choose a pattern with a bit less contrast.  I was a bit limited though, because the ric-rac only comes in about 5 colors, so I had to find a complimentary fabric that also looked good with the ric-rac.  Luckily, there are ribbons to match all of the ric-rac colors, so I didn't have to worry about that.

While sewing the dress, I was about 4 inches from finishing the final hem when all of a sudden, my machine ate one of my straight pins.  I have never had that happen before and I had to take the plate completely off to dig the pin out.  When I did, I was shocked to see that it had been bent into a "2" shape.  So odd.  Sadly, this also poked a small hole in the fabric.  It was easy to patch up and will never be seen unless you get really close and know exactly where to look.  It is along the back neckline and is hidden in the gathers.  Oops!

Two Shirts for Malcolm

I'm still making things for Malcolm, and I finally got some photos of two of his newest shirts.

First, I made an elephant shirt to go with a pair of pants I bought last year.  There are four things I love in pants for little boys:

1.  seersucker stripes
2.  little all-over embroidered design
3.  roll-up style that can be buttoned at various lengths
4.  priced cheap on clearance

These adorable seersucker pants with embroidered elephants from Janie & Jack met all four criteria and I had to buy them.  Of course, without a shirt, the pants are useless, so I found a cute single color design where the elephant looked pretty similar to the ones on the pants.  He wore the outfit to the zoo and looked pretty sharp.

 

It was the end of the day and they were getting goofy.

I offered to make him a shirt for his birthday, and he and I spent an evening looking through designs.  He liked lots of designs, but finally settled on one that said "Birthday Boy" with a cupcake.  I searched through my scrap fabric and chose four colors that I thought would look nice together.  After I made the shirt, I showed it to him and he told me that, "Those aren't the colors I was thinking about."  Turns out that he wanted purple on it somewhere, but I didn't have any purple scrap fabric.  This was a couple of days before his birthday, and by the time the big day rolled around, he had decided that he liked it after all.

Ready to start opening presents.

New jump rope!

Shirt and Shorts Set

Kevin bought me two new hoops for Christmas, and I have been very bad and had not tried them out yet.  My machine isn't recognizing the giant giga hoop and I need to call the company and find out what is up with that.  In the meantime, I needed to try out my new free arm hoop which is tiny, only 2 inches square, and is for getting into small spaces like cuffs.  I knew what I wanted to do, but that meant that I also had to break out my editing software and actually use it.  I finally worked out how to get it done, and Dorothy has a new little set that is adorable!  It is so cute, that I can't wait to do some more, but she doesn't really need any more clothes.  After a bit more practice, I might add some sets to my Etsy shop, so keep an eye out.  Until then, I'm always open to taking custom orders, if you have an idea of something you would like, please let me know.

It was difficult to get decent pictures of the clothes, but she was too cute playing in yard.  I just let her do her thing while I tried to be ready with the camera.

The shirt has the full design on it, but I had to size it down a bit from the original to get it to fit on the shirt.  There are a couple of spots where I'm not happy with how it lined up, but overall, it is pretty cute.

For the shorts, I got rid of the mushrooms and only kept three of the flowers.  Then flipped the butterfly to face the other direction and moved all the piece a little closer together.  Then I sized the whole thing way down to get it small enough to fit in the hoop.  I was surprised at how well the shorts stitched out.  I changed so many things from the original that I was afraid it would go all wonky.

The original design called for a lot of colors and I simplified it a little by eliminated two of them and just having some of the other colors repeat.  The next time I stitch this one, I'm going to simplify it even more and make the main color of both mushrooms the same.  I don't like the lighter coral on the bigger mushroom as much and think it will look less busy if they are both the same color.

Overall, this is a great little play set and it was perfect for her gymnastics class this morning.  Cute and comfy.