Lil Bro/Big Sis

My cousin is getting ready to have baby #2. Her little girl is about 18 months old. Baby #2 is supposed to wait until May 3 before making his debut, but he's already started to come on two separate occasions! Thankfully the doctors have been able to stop mom's contractions both times, though. Several months ago, my cousin asked me to make big sister/little brother shirts for the kids to wear home from the hospital. I told her to remind me when she was about a month away from her delivery date. Little man seems to be wanting out sooner, so I had to buckle down last week and get those things made up before his birthday. I went to the Babies R Us right down the street from my house and they were working on moving their location. Their kids clothes were BOGOF! I was able to score a 3 pack of newborn shirts and a onesie for sister all for $10! Score! I got this really cute plaid fabric at one of the smaller fabric stores in town. I always have such a difficult time deciding which fabric to choose when I'm at those stores because there are SO MANY that I want! Here is little brother's shirt:

It's SO tiny!

When I chose the shirts, I knew I more than likely wouldn't be able to applique a newborn sized onesie on my sewing machine. I also knew that I wouldn't be able to squeeze the whole word "brother" on the front of one. Satin stitching around that would be next to impossible. On second though, I might should have tried just straight stitching the outline of the letters on there and tried to fit the whole word on there. A different project for a different day...

The letters are all ironed on and ready to go!

I just can't get over how tiny this it!

I started with the satin stitch, just like I would any other kind of applique, and I realized that this wasn't something I was going to be able to just whip out. I had my normal stabilizer on there and right as I got down to the first corner of the letter "l", I noticed that I had put a hole in the front of the shirt!! I knew this one was going to be chunked in the trash, so I decided to use it as a practice shirt. I took off the stabilizer I had on the back and replaced it with a thicker stabilizer. I was able to finish up the "l" pretty easy. When I moved on to the dot in the "i" the thread started bunching up on me.

Thread bunched up right here.

 After several experimentations with stabilizer and backing and what not, I finally figured out what I needed to do. I got some scrap white cloth and pinned it to the back of my letters. Then I pinned my heaviest stabilizer behind that. After fiddling with my tension and stuff, I was finally happy with what to do to make it work. I started in on shirt #2 and everything worked out fine with it.

Shirt #2 = SUCCESS!

 I'm so glad these things came in a pack of 3! I'm also really glad that I started on these first and not big sister's, because her was a one shot kind of deal! Thankfully, I was able to get hers done without any hitches! She's a size 24mo. but because of the decoration up at the top, I had to move the applique a little bit lower on her shirt. Then I was thinking that because it was a onesie that maybe the applique would end up being tucked into her pants some, so I decided to make her onesie into a regular shirt.I just measured a little bit lower to where I thought the hemline should be.

Big Sis as a onesie!

Just measure...

And cut!

I was left with a cut that likes to roll up on itself. I've been seeing these double needles and I decided that I wanted to try it out. This was the perfect time to see it work! In the picture below if you look really closely, you can see that the needle is doubled. There is one shank that holds it in place, but two needles below the red part. I threaded a bobbin with the green thread I was using and I put it on my spool holder beside my regular sized spool of thread.

Double Needle

I folded the raw edge of the shirt under and sewed a double stitch around the bottom. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that the shirt was bought that way!

Finished hem, double stitched.

Finished Shirt!

I mailed them off on Wednesday and my cousin texted me yesterday that she had gotten them in the mail already! I can't wait to see the kids in them! :)

 

Pretty Bird

I finished the dress I was making for the silent auction at church! I wish I could make one in my size.

I didn't get many pictures of this side.

Pretty Bird!

I love the paisley wing :)

Followup to Monkeying Around

A few weeks ago, I posted blog about some of the burp cloths I had made. I finished up the batch I was making for a friend who had requested some and I wanted to show them to you.

This was the first one I did in this set.

I super creepy Facebook stalked my friend's pictures of her baby's nursery. This monkey was one of the decals on the wall. Sometimes she calls Abby her little monkey. This was the first time I'd appliqued a picture onto a burp cloth. I really love the extra touches of the banana and the hair bow. One of the cool things with this monkey is that his darker brown parts are corduroy, so there is a fun texture. 
Funny side story here: Every time I think of corduroy, I think of my grandfather. He said that when he was a kid, people used to call corduroy pants "whistle britches" because they whistled when you walked in them. HAHAHAHA!!!
 

I wanted to show you a close up of how close I sew to the edge of the fabric.

Burp cloth #2. The patterned material is a printed duck fabric. Everything else is a grosgrain ribbon.

Close to the edge again.

Cloth #3. I love this monkey ribbon I found. While the fabric didn't look good with the coloring of the ribbon, I still wanted to include pink in there to keep the cloths cohesive.

Cloth #4. After I finished her name applique, it still looked like it needed something more. I added this raspberry large ricrack and thought it really brought it together. I really love this jumbo ricrack. I've only been able to find it at Hobby Lobby, though.

Cloth #5. I really like how the letters pop with the dark brown outlining.

This was actually a re-do of the first one I gave her. The sizing was off (in my opinion) and the W in the middle wasn't large enough. I think this really corrected it. I really do like the look of this fabric.

Monkeying Around in Pink

That's all of them! I really like how they turned out. You can't really see it, but in the middle of this picture under the aWg monogram is a paci clip I made, too. I'd never made one before, so I kinda just threw it in at the last minute. I didn't take any pictures - I forgot.

Hope you like them!

Cheese Straws

I had a field trip with my office this past Friday. I decided to make some cheese straws since the guys seemed to like them so much at Christmas. I also wanted to make them because I just got an electric cookie press. It was actually a gift I'd given my mom that she'd forgotten she had. 
Mom got an electric cookie press as a wedding gift back in the 70's. It's one of those things that not many people have heard of, but those of you who have used it, know what a time and strength saver it is.

Just like Mom's!

Probably in the late 90's, the plastic tube on Mom's busted. Ever since then, she's been on the lookout for another electric one. They were really hard to come by, but in recent years I've seen more of them on the market. Mom's always hard to buy gifts for. I decided to purchase one for her for Christmas a few years back. She was really excited and we ended up making cheese straws that year after she'd opened it up. Fast forward a few years.
A few weekends ago my sister flew in from Texas and we hosted a baby shower for her. As we were preparing the food for it, I see the cookie press sitting on the counter and I see the price tag still on it. I thought, "Dang, I can't believe I left that on there!" I forget exactly what I said to mom, but it was something along the lines of how do you like your cookie press? She said, "What do you mean? I just got it." Hilarity ensued as I opened up one of the cabinets, reached in, and pulled out the one I'd gotten her for Christmas several years ago!

The cookie press I got for Mom a few years ago

 with wrapping paper STILL ON THE BOX!!!

Mom offered me her new one and I told her I'd take the one I'd given her since she'd only used it once and already had cheese dough in the brand new one. HAHA!

The last time I made cheese straws, they were really crunchy. I like mine crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. Mom made some really good ones at my sister's shower the other weekend, but she was at work and couldn't give me the recipe when I called her the night I made them. Dad wasn't much help, either. I'm realizing I need to mark the recipes that I like so I'll know which ones to come back to. I ended up just kind of winging it with the ones I made this night. The recipe I used was:
2 sticks softened butter
16oz cheese, grated and softened
2 1/2c flour
1tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
Mix together with hands. Load into cookie press. Press into desired shape. Bake at 350 until done (about 10-12 min.).
If I do this recipe again, I'll either lose a stick of butter or add 1/2c or more of the flour. I will also double the cayenne pepper. I'm not a fan of hot and spicy things from chilies, but this recipe could have used just a bit more bite to it.

Locked and loaded.

Once it's all mixed up, load it in your cookie press and go to town.

Caution: Contents under pressure.

They're excellent fresh out of the oven, or after sitting for a few hours. They guys loved them!

Cheesy deliciousness!

Saving the World, One Cake at a Time

These cakes were requested of me by my cousin. She's been a babysitter to two little guys since they were born and has always gotten them a birthday cake. This year she asked me to do them. I had fun using a few new techniques that allowed me to experiment and learn.

The first cake I did was for Braydon back in January. He's a huge fan of Spiderman! I googled some Spiderman cake ideas, but didn't see anything that I liked that I could do in the time frame and budget I was working in. I remembered something I'd pinned on Pinterest a while back and decided to give it a try. The whole premise of this idea is to use a coloring book page image and layer the colors on in reverse. There's a great tutorial that explains it all and shows you with pictures every step you need to take over at Moey's Heart & Hearth. She gives wonderful instructions!
There were some hard learned lessons that I'm going to share, but first I wanted to show you the cake!

Spiderman Cake

This was the finished product! Overall I was really happy with it. The Spiderman image was a coloring book page that I found by googling. As I started to put pen to paper (or icing to wax paper in this case) I though, man this is going to be super easy! After outlining his body, I began on the webbing in his suit and quickly realized that I had a potential disaster on my hands. I was working on some monogrammed cookies for a baby shower at the same time and it was getting late on a week night. I persevered and got all of the black lines of his body drawn on. I was able to go back and fill in his red, white, and blue parts next. The red was the worst because it was so tedious to fill in each tiny square of his suit. It was like making sure the maple syrup filled up each nook and cranny of your waffle, but on a more miniscule level. Once it was finally filled in, I popped it in the freezer to harden up.
Moey gives such a wonderful tutorial over at her blog! By the time I was ready to transfer my image to the cake, it was nearing midnight. And I was tired. And I still had 40 cookies to finish after this cake. In my hurried and tired state, I took Spiderman out of my freezer, pulled the wax paper off, and attempted to flip him onto the cake. Had I taken the time to go back to the blog to read the proper steps, I would have realized that I needed to flip it to the cake while it was still on the wax paper. Ugh. Pieces ensued. He broke into about 8 pieces all together. Most of those places were either at narrow parts of him, or on a black line somewhere on him. I finally got all of his pieces on the cake and patched him up. Crisis averted. I finished up the cake with a fun web, a Spiderman logo, and the birthday boy's name and age. All in all, I was happy with the way this cake turned out and I am looking forward to using this technique again in the future! Here are some more pictures:

I think the sides of a cake go unused so often.

I love to use the side of the cake to write the recipient's name or to continue to design from the top of the cake.

I googled this image as well and just eyeballed and free handed the thing into the web on the side.

Braydon is 6!

I'm so glad they got this shot! They requested a red and blue swirled cake. What a fun surprise to cut into!

 

 The next superhero cake I did was for Braydon's brother Taz. Braydon loves Spiderman and Taz loves the Hulk! I googled to get some ideas and saw some really interesting Hulk cakes out there. I'd been searching over my lunch break for a few days and knew I had to make some decisions soon. I was going to do another reverse transfer so I was searching for some Hulk coloring pages when I came across this gem!

From: www.seecatecreate.com

 Once I saw it, I KNEW this was it! It reminded me of the Andre The Giant face:

OBEY

If you don't know who Andre The Giant is, please stop reading this blog immediately and Wikipedia him. If you DO know who he is and have seen the above image before, then YAY! I can actually remember watching him wrestle on TV as a child. And Princess Bride is such a classic.
With the Hulk cake, I ended up free handing and tweaking the design a little bit. Overall it turned out great. I had some cake issues on the inside that I was able to cover up with the icing. My black icing on this one had really large water spots in the icing. I think I must have added too much water to the icing when I was mixing it up. Lesson learned!

HULK SMASH!!!!

 

Tight squeeze on this one, but it fit!

Happy 9th Birthday Taz!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monkeying Around!

I was asked by a coworker at one of my jobs to make some burp cloths for her 5 month old daughter. For a shower gift, I made some burp cloths that were some of the first ones I'd done. I've gotten a bit more fancy with them since. Here are a few pictures of ones I've done in the past. I didn't take pictures of the construction process because I wasn't thinking about blogging at the time. Something I will remedy in the future...
Enjoy!

This is one of the first ones that I ever made. It's supposed to be a monogram, but the W ended up being smaller than I wanted. It was my first one, so it wasn't too terribly bad.

aWg

 Here is a close up. As you can see, I had some spacing issues where my machine didn't catch with the bobbin at times. This was before I discovered stabilizer ;)

Spacy

 Here is an example of the next one I did. The middle initial turned out a lot better this time around. I did a wide zig-zag on this one. It made some of the turns and corners look a little funny, but all in all, it was good. I also did another one that said "savannah" in the same font.

sKg

 I started getting a bit more fancy the more I made these. I whipped these out one night over Christmas break at my parent's house. There was one more burp cloth I included with this set that isn't pictured here. It was done in the same fabric as the monogrammed one with the name "mara" on it in the same font (this is for my future niece!). It's not pictured here because I didn't have it outlined and sewn down when this picture was taken. (Now that I'm taking a closer look at this, I'm realizing that the S in the monogram is upside down. Dangit!)

Hoot! in pink and green

 Here is a close-up of one of the burp cloths in this set. I really like the owl ribbon that I found for this. It is so cute and can be used with a wide range of complimenting ribbon colors.

Hoot! close-up

I went looking one Sunday a few weeks ago for some cloth and ribbon to do this for one of the guys in my office whose wife had just had a baby. After riding out to Hobby Lobby and seeing the empty parking lot, I remembered that they were closed on Sunday. I'm glad that they are off on Sunday, but I did kick myself for forgetting this that day. The closest fabric store to my location was a Wal-Mart. I was dreading going in on a Sunday, but I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised to find this gorgeous fabric there. Finding an associate who could cut my fabric was a whole other story. After looking around for someone on my own for a bit, I ended up calling the store from my phone, telling them I was back there (with others who were waiting, too) and needed fabric cut. And then there was the whole checking out process that made me want to stab myself in the eye is always a much dreaded event for any Wal-Mart trip I need to make. By the end of the evening, I was happy with my final results, though.

Pretty Paisly in pink

Close up of one that I used some fabric strips on as accents.

Here is a teaser for some that I am working on right now. I went online to check out the nursery of the baby I'm making these for. She's got an animal theme going on, and her mom always calls her a "little monkey" :) I'm wanting to use the same fabric from the "Pretty Paisley" burp cloths, so I added a little pink bow to the monkey to keep them cohesive. And to make the monkey a bit more girly. This is the first time I've appliqued a picture on the burp cloths, but I think it turned out really cute. I was even able to use some corduroy fabric on the dark brown parts to add some more texture. I'm looking forward to finishing these up this week. I'll post more pictures along with some tutorials when I finish them. I'm also thinking of a different way to package these that includes a pacifier clip using the same color scheme. We'll see what happens!

Little Monkey in pink

Cake Squares

My good friend, Tara, has kept me pretty busy lately! One of her friends called me a few weeks ago and asked me to make about 70 cake squares for a bridal shower she is hosting on Sunday. I'm beginning to wonder if cake squares are a southern thing, and old fashioned thing, or both? I googled to try to find some ideas for decorations for my cake squares and there isn't really a whole lot out there. 

For those of you who don't know what cake squares are, they're basically a sheet cake that's been iced, cut into bite-sized squares, then decorated. They're really cute, and just the perfect size for a bite of something to sweet at a shower or party. Here are the ones I made for my customer:

Yellow Rose and Monogrammed Cake Squares

I've been putting monograms on a lot of the things I've been baking and sewing lately. We here in the south love a monogram! The other design I included on the cake squares were a yellow rose type flower. they were really easy to make and turned out super cute! I hope that my customer is happy with the end result, too!

Here are all the things I did to make these cake squares. Disclaimer: My camera is a piece of crap has some years on it and the pictures aren't that great. But I didn't want to leave everything up to your imagination!

First, I used my Aunt Edna's pound cake recipe and poured it into a jelly roll type baking sheet. You know, the one with the sides on it. Next time I think I'll use my grandmother's pound cake recipe. It's a bit denser than Aunt Edna's. I had a terrible feeling that the cake squares were going to crumble as soon as I cut into them because of how flimsy the cake was once I turned it out of the pan the other night. Because I needed 70 cake squares I made two cakes this way so that I would have enough. I baked the cakes on Tuesday night, wrapped them in Saran wrap, and put them on the shelf until I was ready to ice everything this morning. Last night, I made two recipes worth of my butter cream icing. I think next time I will only do one and a half recipes.

This is what I had this morning:

Plain Sheet Cake

 I slapped some butter cream on and spread it on about 1/4" thick.

Iced sheet cake

 I wanted to get the butter cream as smooth as possible, so I used my metal spatchula and warmed it up in some hot water before going back over the icing again. That smoothed it out (except for that one line down the middle, but that doesn't matter).

Smoothed Icing

 Next, I start putting the lines for the squares on the cake. I went to Hobby Lobby yesterday and was thinking about how the best way was so get all the squares even and uniform. When I've done cake squares in the past, they've come out a little sloppy on the evenness of the size. I found a clear ruler and knew that would be the ticket! I held the ruler above the icing and dipped one long edge into the icing, then the other. I repeated this as I worked my way across my cake, stopping occasionally to wipe down the ruler.

Starting on the grid.

The completed grid

As you can see in the completed grid, I didn't quite get the lines in the middle of the cake, but that was ok. I just followed the "ghost line" until I caught up with the other end of it.

After getting my lines laid out, I grabbed my pizza cutter and cut the cake! After trying many methods, including but not limited to knives, string, floss *blushes*, etc., I've found that the pizza cutter works brilliantly for this! I had to stop often to get the excess icing off of the roller, but the finished result is well worth it!

Pizza cutter in action!

Like buttah.

At this point, I looked around and realized that this was my first cake and that I had one more to go just like it. What on earth was I going to do with all of these cake squares while I did the second cake?! I decided to box them up while they waited on their decorations so that they won't dry out. I've found that the best way (for me) to transport things like this is to use a shirt box, lined with wax paper. Here they are in the box:

Ladies in waiting.

Once I got the other cake finished, I boxed those squares up, too, then mixed my colors. The hostess of the shower requested yellow and green as the colors on the squares. She wanted more green than yellow. I included 80 squares in case there were any casualties in getting them from point A to point B. I got to work on the yellow roses first. I used one of the rose petal tips (I think it was like 103 or something like that) to make the roses:

1. Make a half moon shape

2. Make a little squiggle in the middle of the half moon

3. Starting at 9 o'clock, pull an outer petal down and around until just about 5 o'clock

4. Starting at 3 o'clock, pull another outer petal down and around until about 7 o'clock

5. Using a #5 tip with green icing, put a stem on the rose

Tada!
I knew I wanted to do a monogram, but I wanted to double check with the hostess to see what monogram she wanted on there. There were three options: 1. The bride's current monogram, 2. The bride's soon-to-be monogram, or 3. The combined monogram of the groom's first name letter, groom's last name letter, bride's first name letter (ex.: John Davis is marrying Suzanne Peters, then their combined monogram would be JDS). She decided to go with what the bride's soon-to-be monogram will be.

PMH is what her new monogram will be.

Once I got all 80 of them done and boxed up, I wrapped the boxes with Saran wrap to keep them fresh. I took all of my cake trimmings to work at my part-time job today because I definitely didn't want them sitting around my house and I didn't want them to be thrown away. The girls loved them! I like to think they appreciated the sweet treat on such a busy day. I can't wait to hear from Tara how the shower goes tomorrow. I hope everything is delicious and that the bride and her friends have a wonderful time with each other :)

I'm headed to go work on something for another friend now. I hope to finish that one tonight and tomorrow so that I can post about it tomorrow night or Monday!