New Lovie Coming Soon!

Living in Austin Texas you have to love Longhorns!  Today I decided I would design a Lovie that represents Austin.  I used Stitch Artist 1 to create this wonderful new Lovie face – a little baby Longhorn.  He stitched out beautifully!  The more I work with this program from Embrilliance Essentials the more I learn.  Playing with the program is the key to learning the techniques to create beautiful things.

I used the manual drawing tools to create the design.  I wanted to give some dimension to the face so I  used appliqué for the eye and the nose. This little guy has over 12,000 stitches!

The horns were made in the hoop as well as the Lovie face. Next I will quilt the blanket and assemble into a wonderful security blanket Longhorn Lovie.  This little guy will be listed in my Etsy shop soon!

Fun With Embroidery – Little Fruit Stuffies!

I love being creative with embroidery!  I was shopping  for a child’s first birthday gift when I remembered how much my children loved playing with those little plastic fruit sets that came with a shopping basket. I decided I wanted to make some fruit stuffies with little faces and a shopping bag to put them in.

I started with some fruit appliqué patterns, using Embrilliance Essentials and Enthusiast I added faces, and then turned the patterns into in-the-hoop projects.  What fun it was to create expressions for each fruit. I made each piece of fruit in a 4×4 hoop – leaving a small opening for adding stuffing.  After I stitched them (in an appropriate color fleece) it was easy to stuff each and hand stitch the small opening closed – no other sewing was needed.

I made a little bag with some heavy mesh and added an appliqué label.

I’m pretty happy with how these came out! This little set can be used to learn the names of the fruit, colors, and even counting.  They are the perfect size for little hands.  I sure hope the little guy I made this set for has a lot of fun with it!

A New Lovie Joins the Family

This weeks addition to the Lovie Family is an adorable little Horse!  My daughter has a very good friend who loves horses so at her suggestion I designed this beauty.

Maddy’s Horse Lovie a true an original!  The sweet little face has appliquéd elements and adorable embroidered eyes.  The blanket portion is done in a light blue denim look flannel and a rustic brown and tan fleece.  I really enjoy quilting free-motion swirl patterns and love how it looks on this combination of fabrics.

Do you have an idea for a new Lovie? Please leave any comments or suggestions  –  I can design a custom Lovie for you to gift to someone special.

Stitch Artist – Designing a New Lovie

For Mothers Day my wonderful husband upgraded my Embrilliance Software to include Stitch Artist 1.  I can’t express how excited I was to receive this awesome gift.  Every since I started doing some embroidery (only 5 months ago) I have wanted to be able to not only merge purchased designed, but actually create my own.

The week after receiving my upgrade I had a request for an Owl Lovie.  I knew that drawing an owl face would be pretty simple but designing something really cute took a bit of research.  I knew the eyes would be the most important feature so I googled “owl eyes” to get some ideas.  I love how anime animals look so that is where I started. Simple shapes can make something pretty interesting.

Stitch Artist 1 is very easy to use especially if you have been using other tools in the Embrilliance platform.  The stitch area on my Brother SE1800 is 5×7 so I created a simple oval for the face adding little ear feathers to give it some interest.  The eyes were drawn using circles and the “create outline” tools to merge the elements and to make holes.  I played with the 3D view to choose interesting fill designs.  After completing the face I had some space left in the hoop so I drew two little feet that could be stitched out and added to the Lovie blanket after quilting.  I make this sound simple, but it did take a bit of playing around to get the look I wanted. Being new to Stitch Artist I had to get a feel for the tools, the order to work in, and how to determine and adjust where the stitching for each element should start and end.   I also experimented a bit with fill settings to ensure that I would have decent registration in the eyes.  The zoom tools and 3D/stitch view are awesome.  You can really see where the needle falls will be and can make adjustments through fill settings – or by manually sizing each element to ensure the overlap will bring all the pieces together well.

I am pretty happy with the results.  I will continue to work on the hardest part for me – understanding compensation and density.  YouTube videos, blog posts, and reading about digitizing in general have been a real benefit.  I have a lot to learn and look forward to becoming more proficient.

This is the final Baby Owl Lovie.  If you would like me to design a custom Lovie for you – simply send me a message and I will work with you to make the perfect Lovie!

A Quick Little Gift

With Easter fast approaching I decided to spend yesterday making a small gift for a neighbor.

I thought a tote bag would be nice – something a toddler could use to keep his treasures nearby.  I had some blue and white checked canvas and a small amount of blue quilters cotton in my stash – so I pulled them out and decided to wing it.  I have made a number of tote bags and fabric boxes in the past year so I used the techniques I have learned to put something together.

Supplies for the tote bag:

• 1 –  11″ x 27 1/2″ canvas for the outer fabric
• 1 – 11″ x 27 1/2″ cotton lining fabric
• 1 – 11″ x 26 1/2″ craft felt to give the bag some body
• 2- 1 1/2″ x 17″ twill tape

I decided to personalize the bag and I try my hand at appliqué.  To center the appliqué I needed to decide how the bag would look… I wanted something easy for a toddler to carry and that would keep it’s shape. Boxing the bottom for a 4 1/2″ flat surface should do it. To center the appliqué I folded the canvas in half, measured up from the bottom fold about 2 1/4″ and found that my main area would be around 11″ square – I marked the center point with a pin.

I love to use Sulky Sticky Self-Adhesive Tear-Away Stabilizer when doing many of my projects.  Using my 5′ x 7″ hoop I placed the stabilizer on the back of the hoop and marked the center with a pen.  This is easy when you lineup the alignment marks on the hoop to the lines on my cutting mat.

Folding the canvas lengthwise I placed the fabric so that the pin was on the center point and the center crease lined up with the hoop alignment marks, unfolded it, and pressed the fabric onto the sticky stabilizer.  I have found that a pizza dough roller works great for this!

Appliqué time!

I did a simple appliqué frame.  First the machine stitched out the guide line, I laid down the fleece and then stitched the cut line.   I removed the hoop from the machine and used Curved Embroidery Snips to trim away the fabric.  I replaced the hoop and moved on to the satin stitched frame.  After seeing the stitching of the frame and name I thought that the stitching would have been improved if I added some WSS to the top.  I decided to place some WSS on the fleece before stitching the peeps design. You can see in the picture below that the peeps look much nicer them the name and satin stitching.  Overall it came out OK for a first try – I learned a lot for the next time I attempt one.    

Moving on to bag construction I folded the lining fabric in half,  stitched up the sides and boxed the corners.

For the body of the bag I lined up the felt  on the wrong side of the canvas and smoothed it out. The felt is cut slightly shorter then the canvas to allow for the edges of the canvas fabric to be folded over onto the felt and create a finished edge.  I stitched up the sides, trimmed the seam, and boxed the corners to match the lining.

Bag assembly is pretty easy for this pattern.  I turned the canvas/felt inside out and fitted it into the lining, folding the lining edge down as I moved around the bag.  Strap placement is really easy you simply pin the ends of the twill tape between the canvas/felt and the lining.  I placed them 2 1/2″ in from the side seam on each side and down about 1/2″ on each end.  

To finish I stitched along the top edge of the assembled bag.  I like doing this with the bag inside out because the top stitching will be on the outside of the bag.  First I did a scant 1/8″ seam along the edge, then I stitched around a second time with a 1/4″ seam to finish and make a nice strong edge

After all the stitching was done I turned the bag right-side out.  I think it came out pretty good!Now, I certainly can’t give a child and empty bag so I stitched up two little fleece bunnies.  These are an In-The-Hoop project, free from Urban Threads.  I think they came out pretty cute.

This was a fun project – I can’t wait to gift it!

The finished bag is 11″ tall, 6″ wide, and 4 1/2″ deep.