Thankful Amanda

This year for her Birthday party, my daughter picked a birthday invite made with clip art I recognized immediately: Karamfilas' Halloween Please, which I better recognized as the Ghoulettes Collection run by Kammie Lou Lou. I headed to the BSTs to see if I could by some Ghoulettes fabric, but I found something even better: a shop owner who had fabric on hand and the time to sew it up for me! 

That freed me up to do something equally exciting; Sew a shirt for myself! I am still loving the Tangled Amanda I made for myself last year, and on the heels of my recent spat of seasonal sewing, I thought it wise to strike on my Thankful & Grateful collection while the "iron of fall" was still hot. 

I only had about 24 hours left before the party when I made this decision, but I did manage to pull it off. Here I am modeling my self-made "Thankful Amanda" a few days later: 

And here I am the day of the party, showing off my newly made shirt, and being incredibly grateful to Jude & Joseph for creating the Ghoulettes top my daughter is wearing at my side! The craftsmanship was superb, and my daughter wore the shirt plenty even after halloween!

I look forward to wearing my shirt for years to come as well. 

Christmas Train Set Complete!

After completing the Halloween Shirt for my brother with... 2 weeks to spare, I decided it was probably wise to get a leg up on Christmas. This particular artwork has already been featured on a shirt for my dad and a shirt for my brother, but I wanted to get my Mom in on the action. I had a package going to her house anyway, and I'd been hoarding this fabric for about 2 years.

To make this holiday beauty I chose the Patterns for Pirates Basic (Now Favorite) Tee. I had already test-driven the pattern once for Mom's Small World Top, but this time I elected to go with 3/4 sleeves for the winter. I only had one yard of the double border print to work with, so I had to be particularly careful with my fussy cutting. Fortunately the pieces *just barely* interlocked without any overage on my 58" wide fabric. For the sleeves I used a PurpleSeamstress Solid. 

Overall, I was very happy with the way this turned out - initially I worried that the "featured" part of the print didn't go high enough (it's a 14" border an my mother is 5'4"), but my mother accessorized with a nice necklace and the height of the print was perfect. I also really liked the effect of the contrast sleeves - it really makes the train pop, and it differentiates the look from all the storebought stuff out there.

This tee went out in October 2021 alongside my brother's Halloween tee, but it took a month or two before the timing was right to wear it. Here my mom is sporting her new Christmas tee alongside my Dad, whose train shirt I made in 2019. Quite the matched set! Next year we'll see if we can nab a picture with my brother in the shot as well.

Mickey's Not-so-Scary Halloween Raglan

Holiday fabric presents a particular challenge for me: I buy it, but then I never think about actually making the item until a week before the holiday in question. That's  usually too late to get much use out of it if you're a growing kid. But if you're an adult, there's always next year!

This raglan for my brother was started on October 11th - using Fabric that had languished in my stash for at least 3 Halloweens. As usual, this is it's a Cole's Creations Jerry Raglan size 42.

I can put these together in a matter of hours now - although I do wish the pattern itself came with an A0 file so it'd be easier to store. They're my go-to pattern for fun mens' shirts, and my brother sure had fun with this one. He wears it to his bowling league, and always gets rave reviews for having Mickey Mouse on his shirt. 

Here he is at one of his outings, with his shirt on and a smile on his face!

Final Fantasy Set: Embrace Your Dreams

In August I made a few fun, on-point blankets for my long-distance nephew. But because of the late notice, I could not score any Double-sided Minky "Magic" blankets. That changed a few months later, when this fabric ran and I learned that my Brother-in-law is a big Final Fantasy fan. 

Even better, this Fabric's supplier in Japan now had a USA host, which made shipping *much* cheaper. So I ordered up blankets and "Stuffies" for my nephew. 

The Stuffies were a new adventure; I cut them out in rectangles, sewed them together, and stuffed them, but I did find out that the stuffing wasn't the most satisfying texture. Next time, I think I'm going to buy a backing fabric so I can shape the pillows to the characters' silhouettes. 

Here's the fronts of the pillows:

And the backs:

Because it was a long-distance nephew, all of this had to go into a box to be mailed; I wish I'd taken a picture *of* the box because - fearing that Nephew's parents would open it with a sharp object and accidentall stab one of the compressed pillows as it popped out - I wrote "Open Carefully: Pillows Inside" ALL OVER the box. My SIL later told me she was terrified to open it, but the pillows did come out unharmed. 

The blanket went into immediate use:

And both my nephew and my BIL Love it! 

A DBZ Welcome for the Twins

It took me a little while to find the perfect DragonBall Z fabric - and then even longer to get it ordered and delivered. But for my local twin nephews, I pulled out all the stops. Two yards of Woven, a yard of Cotton Lycra, Two Luxe Minky Blankets... lots of fun stuff for when the boys are young.

For the nursery, I had planned to make a crib sheet using the Quilter's Crib Sheet Tutorial by Stitched in Color. But unfortunately, when the (woven) fabric came, it was in two *separate* one yard cuts, rather than continuous yardage... oops. Fortunately my Mom (also a quilter) had encountered this problem before.

Her solution was to place extra strips along the sides of the fabric to increase the length of the sheet - I rotated the fabric and adapted the concept to increase the width, and it worked. As an apology the host also gave me an extra yard of the woven fabric, which I was thrilled to turn into a bassinet sheet - after I pilfered the extra inches I needed for my modified crib sheet.

For the boys themselves, I was still stitching on their Luxe Minky Blankets when they arrived (three weeks ahead of schedule! Apparently they don't like to let twins gestate too long). So, I didn't get a great shot of the blankets until *after* I gave them to the twins. 

But hey: what I lost out on in carefully curated shots that show off my makes, I more than got back in adorable models. Here's my daughter holding her newborn cousin, who is wrapped in a blanket hot off my sewing machine!

Inconceivably cute!

Before my SIL even knew the gender (let alone number) of babies she was carrying, she picked out this Princess Bride print for her baby-to-be. I'm also a huge fan, so I loaded up for both of us - but of course, at the time I only anticipated one baby so I only planned for one blanket.

A few days before my SIL went to the hospital to deliver, I knew I wanted to make a going home outfit *for* the twins, from this special first-pick fabric. But the challenge was, what size to make the outfits? The twins were measuring 5lbs and 6lbs respectively at the ultrasound a week before birth, so I covered my bases: their older brother *loves* the Chicka Chicka Bum Bum shorties I make, so I made them in Preemie AND in Newborn sizing (two of each!) so no matter what size the boys came out, they would have something that fit them right away.

By this point I will admit I was pretty tired of sewing baby cuffs on shorts, shirts, pants, cardis, etc. But it was quite satisfying to send this pic to my SIL right before her hospital stay, and let her know what was waiting for her when the twins were born!

Luxe Minky Addicts, Wherever you Dwell...

... Give us a hint by ringing a bell. 

The moment I knew I was on the Luxe (double-sided) Minky Train and I was not getting off was the moment I bought this blanket with no particular recipient in mind. I just loved the artwork, and figured an opportunity would come up!

The a month or two after it came, I made a trip to Colorado and  ran across my preteen niece wearing a Stitch necklace. What Kismet! My husband's whole family are big Halloween nuts, so from there it was a short jump to pairing blanket with blanket lover. This took maybe 2 hours to cut and sew, and then it was off to my niece's house to be cuddled and loved!

A Wild Rumpus

This summer, I had 3 nephews on the way, and I sewed for them with great enthusiasm. But they day my previous pastor posted on Facebook that she was having a girl well... on the one hand I'd already done a lot of baby sewing complete with tiny cuffs. But on the other hand... most of my friends and family have declared their families complete. So I could not pass up one of the limited opportunities I had left to sew an infant dress. 

 

One of the things that first brought me to custom fabrics was the allure of taking "masculine" prints (see: Walking Dead, Zombies, Sharks) and making feminine things with them. I'm a female engineer, so I'm not a fan of the fashion industry's tendency to divide not just silhouettes and colors, but also *subjects* (cats, puppies, trucks, etc) into the male and the female. When I saw this "Where the Wild Things Are" print, I knew it needed to go to a little girl.

To complete this particular wild rumpus, I opted for a "Magic Blanket", an SLPCo Isla, a pair of Chicka Chicka Bum Bums to go under it. New this time was the Violette Fields Threads Lelani Knit Headband.

 

The headband was a quick sew, although I did size down on the bow a bit, and the bow is not double-sided so the fabric for it needs to be if it's going to look right. Fabric was from Wanderlust, with solids from Purpleseamstress. This was gifted in August 2021, and I've seen pictures in the baby's Facebook feed, so I know it's being loved!

Bob's Burger Capsule

Babies are small, and that's both a blessing and a curse when it comes to fabric usage. On the blessing side, you can get a lot of cute stuff out of just one yard. On the curse side, well... if you want to use a whole yard up, you will be at it for a while. 

This set went to my nephew who was born in September, and whose parents are huge Bob's Burger fans. It's an accompaniment to the Bob's Burger blanket they received at a shower in July. 

Again, this is a Peekaboo Hat (I love how easy that is), an Apple Tree Grow With me Bunny Bottoms, and an Apple Tree Cardigan. I also had enough fabric left over for a Peekaboo Bodysuit, but I forgot to take pix of that before I sent it. Between this and the DC Superhero Set, I got pretty tired of sewing tiny cuffs on things, but I know these makes will be well appreciated.