Crafting!

I had been wanting to do some appliqué for awhile but I was afraid of it. I finally tried it once on a onesie and it was a horrible mess. I was trying to just pin the small giraffe on the 3-6 month onesie and then try to sew it while not making any piles of fabric. After doing some more blog research I discovered that everyone was much more successful when they used Wonder Under, or another type of iron on fabric glue. It’s a fantastic addition to appliqué. I’m not yet talented enough to rotate the fabric while doing an actual appliqué stitch or even a zig-zag, so I just stuck with the straight stitch. I’m still learning so don’t judge my inability to sew a straight line, but I still like how they turned out.

These onesies I made for all the new nieces that were born into the Grigg clan in 2009. I wanted to get them done while Joe’s dad was visiting he could take them home to the family. We decided that Robbie would also need a shirt, and he suggested a race car, with flames! That was definitely more difficult, but I think we came out successful. I have no idea how all of these will do in the laundry, I imagine that the ends of the fabric will fray, which I think will add a cute look to it, I just hope it all stays together! At least I know it looked cute once!

 

Our friends Emily and Bill were having a combined birthday party for their girls Sally and Alice. I decided that I didn’t to just find a toy to buy for them, but wanted to give them something a little more cute. I had an extra giraffe to use for Alice’s shirt (she turned 1) but Sally needed something more appropriate for a 3 year old. Joe thought a butterfly might be nice and I agreed, she had butterflies in her room. So we set out looking for a butterfly shape to mimic. We found a shape I liked and Joe worked his magic in Photoshop and made me a beautiful double layered butterfly! (he also enhanced the baby giraffe, elephant, and rhino). He’s so good!
This is what we came up with for Sally and Alice.

Unfortunately my sewing machine was acting up and the stitches are terrible, hopefully no one looks very closely. Turns out my bobbin thread was a little out of wack. I hope that the appliqué stays on through the wash!

I love Halloween, but I never love dressing up. I really like just wearing cute Halloween shirts. My usual shirt for Halloween “shrunk” so I had to come up with something new this year. Of course appliqué was the answer. I decided that Joe and I should both have bat shirts. I had just purchases some hard-to-resist-sale fabric in fun Halloween designs, so we were set. Again, we set out to find a bat shape I liked and then Joe went into Photoshop to make it exactly what I wanted. I bought a black long sleeved shirt at Target the night before and Joe had an extra shirt from his gay for Edward experiment, so we were set. We decided that we didn’t want to be exactly matching so we decided he would have a smaller bat than mine and we would put it at an angle on the left side of the shirt. I think if you can have manly appliqué this one is for sure there.

We wore these to our ward’s Fall Festival and I felt very festive. You can also see our cute Mickey votive holders. We bought those last year when we were in Disney World.

If you would like any of my appliqué templates, just let me know, I can email them to you, or maybe I’ll even post them on the side.

For mutual one night I decided that it would be fun to have the girls sew some blankets. I got the idea from sugardoodle.net, they were kind of sponsoring a service project for giving cards and blankets to the Ronald McDonald House. We (the Beehives) combined efforts with the Mia Maids (their leaders were looking for something to do, and it worked out great. Becky was able to bring her sewing machine too, and we definitely needed two machines going at once. We were able to get all of the blankets sewn, but not finished. Becky and I each took two blankets to finish the edges on, and they all turned out great. I was really pleased with how it went.