Baby #5 Pillow

Here's a Fleece Baby Pillow I made for  Mom/Family expecting baby #5...

This family is super traditional and I really struggled with what to make because the family doesn't know the baby's gender and nursery theme is undecided.

This is my attempt at gender and theme neutral-- can't get more simple than this...

I like the idea of number pillows with last name....been wanting to make one of these for a while.



This was for our Girl Scout Troop Leader.  As you can see, the whole shower was green and yellow. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Diaper Bag

A couple of months ago I made a pillow for a friend's daughter that was expecting a new baby girl back in July.  The Mom-to-be loved the pillow (featured back in June)  so much that she asked me to make a diaper bag in the same fabric.

Here it is....

The fabric is "Cute Patchwork" fabric by Michael Miller just like the pillow.  I did not use a pattern.  Katie, the Mom sent me a picture of what she had in mind and I duplicated.  I embroidered the name and appliqued initials on the front of the bag just like the pillow.

I made two big pockets on the back side.

On the backside, I added a magnetic snap closure and for the first time ever chrome rings to the 2.5 inch wide single crossover strap to kinda dress it up a bit. 

I am pleased with how this turned out.  I don't usually make bags for "sale", I hope she likes it!  Thanks again for stopping by!

Monogram Bloomers

I have not embroidered bloomers in quite a while.  I was surprised to get a custom request for these.

I think they turned out cute.  They are shipping to North Carolina today.  I wish I had had my embroidery machine when Micaela was little, I would have embroidered every single pair she had.  

Thanks for stopping by!  

Sewing Baby Shower

This weekend I hosted a baby shower for one of my dear sewing buddies, Anita.  I hosted the shower at the new Stitched with Love quilting store in my neighborhood.  All of the guests are members of the Plano Quilt Guild so they are seasoned sewists and I thought the quilt store would be a great setting.

The colors for the shower were hot pink and black, chosen by Anita.  I have been making alot of things with this color scheme so I had alot of fabrics in my stash.  During the shower we had snacks and sweets.  This was the sweets table.  The pennant banner was made of fabric and the daisy chain banner was made with cardstock with the baby's name Diana Grace.

Here is a close up of the gourmet Strawberries & Cream popcorn in individual dishes.  I wanted to serve in individual dishes because I thought that would be easier than a big bowl to serve out of.  I had plenty of little bowls but not a single platter that could accommodate them all.  I brainstormed and decided a frame would do the trick so I framed some fabric and tada!   It worked perfectly, the platter and popcorn got great reviews!

Apothecary jars filled with candy are all the rage so this was the perfect excuse to purchase some.  I found some cute scoops at the Container Store.  I was surprised that hardly any of the candy was eaten, I even had little bags and only a few ladies filled them. 

Micaela and I made little favor boxes using my trusty Box #3 Sizzix SU die.  The ice bucket pictured was actually vinyl orange and yellow and at the last minute I covered it with fabric so it would match.

During the shower, we made bibs for baby Diana.  Shirly, one of Anita's friends handled the bib making process and had kit packets made up for everyone.  Here she is explaining everything to all of the ladies.  The bloomers hanging on the design board  behind Shirley are Micaela's bloomers from her toddler days.  I saved them by accident and then when I came across a bag full when I was going to take stuff to a resale shop I decided I could not part with them. 

All of the ladies had a great time sewing. 

Here is a picture of everyone with their bibs!

Here are some of the fabulous handmade gifts Anita received.  

Aren't these little fabric shoes adorable? 

 Here are some of the others.

 It was so much fun to host this shower, thanks for stopping by!

Sew Much to do!

I have sew much to do and I am basically too busy to go to work.  Ha!  I wish that excuse would work for my boss!  Sad thing is, when I am at work, all I can think is "I am too busy to go home".  Do you hear the violins playing sympathy music for me???  Ugh, the story of a working Mom!

Besides the Etsy orders, I am in the process of finishing up swap items for my partners in Austria, Ontario, Utah and 2 in Texas.  I am been sewing alot and will hopefully be posting pictures of everything in the coming weeks. 

In addition to the swaps, I am hosting a Sewing Baby Shower for one of my dear sewing friends in less than two weeks.  I am excited about the shower because I haven't had an opportunity to host one in a while, all of my girlfriends had their babies 8 to 5 years ago. 

I was originally going to host the shower at our home but decided the the new fabric store in my neighborhood would be a fun option since all of the ladies that are invited to this particular shower are members of the Plano Quilt Guild. 

During the shower we are all going to decorate plain bibs for the baby.  Isn't that fun? 

Here is the invitation. 

The colors for baby Diana and pinks, black & white.  I am excited to make some baby items in those colors.  I better get going.  Thanks for stopping by!

Rosebud Set for Adalee

Made this set for a local customer.  I've made like four sets like this for the same person, it's her go to baby shower gift for baby girls.

This is available in my Etsy store.  Thanks for stopping by. 

Rock Star Baby B & B

This is proof that any crazy unusual baby theme is possible if I can find "THE" fabric. This is for the son of major rock & roll fans.  When I got the request, I couldn't even envision what to do then my customer mentioned guitars and I went on major guitar fabric search.  After a local search at four diffierent stores and lots of online browsing, I found this fabric at Wal-Mart--of all places.  (Wal-Mart actually had two other cute guitar fabrics besides this one-- who would have thought?)

The guitar & rock star design is one I had seen online last year at Digistitches, I am so glad I remembered it because I think it coordinates quite nicely with the fabric. 

Made this a little different than usual.  I sandwiched a regular 2-4-2 burp cloth between flannel and the guitar fabric, so the entire back is guitar fabric too.  I top stitched around all the edges in black and then the two center panel seams in white with black bobbin thread for the reverse side to hold the fabrics in place. 

The bib was the usual varsity font I use for boys.  All in all, this is probably the most time consuming set I have ever made but I am very happy with the finished product. 

It's Friday and I am so excited for the weekend even though I have to work a city event tomorrow, hope you have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Baby Shower at School

Micaela's teacher is expecting and today for the final day of Teacher Appreciation Week, we had a little baby shower. 

Here are the items I made.
A banner.  Did this with felt adhered to fabric using thermoweb.  Added on letters I cut out with Cricut using the Cuttin' Up cartridge and did a simple satin stich around the edge, then stitched each piece to ribbon. 

Here is a close up of the banner.

A pillow for the nursery, theme is lambs.

Here's a closeup of the lamb.  This is the first time I use this design and I think it's adorable, I wish I knew more people with this theme in their nursery.

The last thing was a simple diaper cake.  Instead of ribbon, I used the same fabric as the pillow and banner to wrap around the 'tiers' and embroidered it in the same font as the pillow.

It was so fun to make all these things, I wish I knew more ladies having babies!  Thanks for stopping by.

Linking to Made by You Monday

Pop Monkey Again...

This is the only color scheme and theme I have ever repeated in all my sewing projects so far. I can't believe how popular this is. I added ricrac to change things up a bit. Sending this to a local friend who recently had a baby boy and this is the theme in his nursery. Welcome to the world little Will.


Thanks for stopping by!

Another Gift for Dylan

Micaela's teacher is due any day with baby Dylan. (see previous baby shower post here). She actually made it to forty weeks and made it to her class's Pre-K graduation this morning. Beyond that, she made it through the Mother & Father breakfast, the end of the year show, and the Teacher Appreciation Luncheon earlier this month.

Last weekend, I was at JoAnn and saw this cute green monkey fabric that matched Dylan's baby bedding so I thought I would make one more little burp cloth & bib set for Dylan as a 'reward' for not arriving early and letting his Mama make it to all her class activities. LOL.

Here's the bib & burp cloth set. I used a different method for attaching the fabric at the bottom of the burp cloth, a tube method used for pillow cases. You can watch a video tutorial by clicking here.

Thanks for stopping by.

Stuff for Baby Dylan

Micaela's preschool teacher is having a baby so all of the student's Moms decided to have a surprise baby shower.

This was the bedding she picked out--->>

Thank goodness we asked for a color scheme because I would have never picked this randomly. Very cute, but finding lime green and black fabric combo was tough.

The Monday before the shower last week, our spy informs us the Mom to be has changed her mind-- from black & lime green to brown & green with monkeys. A color scheme I am all to familiar with... see previous posts here. The embroidered stuff was already done but I still had time to change the other stuff I was making.

Here's the card:

I used the new Cricut Mother's Day cartridge, Chocolate Chip & Gable Green card stock from Stampin' Up!

Here's the burp cloth and bib set.

Isn't it cute? I was really pleased with how it turned out. Finding the fabric was tough but I got really lucky because I discovered a store right here in McKinney. A friend who quilts told me about the "Quilt Asylum". They have more than 1500 bolts of fabric, it's absolutely fabulous-- I went there and sure enough, found the perfect fabric!

This is my first applique bib. I've decided letters with holese aren't fun (well at least small letters)-- it's just really hard not to puncture or snag the fabric underneath. Next time, I will use black thread for the satin stitch around the letter too.

Here's the diaper cake. Nothing too fancy, next time I make one I will remember to embroider the ribbon-- The "Bienvenido" word was way too long for me to try it this time around.

Thanks for stopping by.

Baby Set for Lilly

One of my friends at work hosted a baby shower for a dear friend's daughter. She wanted something simple with just a fancy L. I made this three piece set using the Script Letters font from FunStitch.com.

Name Frame

My Sister in Law gave birth to a beautiful baby girl on Friday morning. We are elated about having a new neice and Micaela is VERY excited about having a 'girl' cousin to play with. I made a name frame for her room and took it to the hospital when we went to meet her. Here it is...



This is 12x12. The background paper is from the Baby Girl Nursery stack by DCWV. I used the Alphalicious cartridge on the Cricut to make the letters out of Apricot Appeal and Lime Green Sugared/Glittered cardstock. Super simple and came together quickly. I just love making name frames, so glad babies are being born so I can keep making these!

Many More Monkeys

A couple of weeks ago I posted some baby shower invites HERE I was doing for a dear friend's daughter. Well the shower was today. I made many more monkey things to go with the baby's room and shower theme... This was fun, but I am done with monkeys and the Chocolate Chip & Certainly Celery color combo for a while.

Remember, this was the baby's theme.
Here are a few of the other things I made.


The crib with the bedding was set up in the living room for everyone to see. I made this simple little banner using the scallop and plain circle dies with the Big Shot. The letters were done with the Alphalicious cartridge on the Cricut.


They had a cute stuffed monkey sitting inside the crib. I made this frame/sign for the monkey to hold. The letters were done with the Alphalicious cartridge and the monkey was done with the New Arrival cartridge on the Cricut.

I made another banner for the mantle, same supplies, tools and cartridges as other.


I made a few monkey things to set around. This was one of the large monkey faces I made. It's hard to tell but this is 12 inches in diameter.

I took a stab at making my first diaper cake. I received one at one of my showers and I just loved it. I followed a combination of several online tutorials. I struggled with this because I thought it was plain but since the theme for the shower was quite simple I didn't want to go overboard with stuff. The band around each layer is a 2" wide grosgrain ribbon that is scallopped like ric rac layered with some of the Certainly Celery ribbon from the Sale A Bration bundle. I looked and looked for a plain brown stuffed monkey all over town and never found one so I settled for one made with the Cricut. I mounted him on a chop stick from Pei Wei

The favors were the ones I showed in this post. I used the monkeys from the retired Monkey Business stamp set and the Box #2 die with the Big Shot to make the box. DH even helped me fill them with green easter grass and Hershey's Kisses.

Here's the happy Mom To Be with the adorable cake.

Thanks for stopping by.........

ETA: I used Chocolate Chip, Close to Cocoa and Creamy Caramel cardstocks for the monkies. The favor boxes were done in Gable Green and the sheer brown ribbon is from JoAnn.

Working on Monkey Stuff

My friend's daughter is having a baby and I have volunteered to make the shower invitations and favors.

The Mom to be has selected the "Pop Monkey" collection from Babies R Us for the baby's room and wanted the shower invitations to have the same theme and the chocolate chip and celery colors.

The first stamp set that came to mind was the Monkey Business stamp set which is retired. I bought this set with grand plans but never got around to using it or event mounting it. Well, it sure came in handy for this....

Here's what I have come up with so far. I have to keep it simple because I have to make over 50 invitations in a short period of time and these days I do not have alot of spare time. We'll see which version the new Mommy picks.

I have to say that normally I am not a fan of monkey, but the more I worked with this little guy the more I grew to love him. My favorite and easiest item is the favor box. I made it using the new Box #2 die from Sissix. This box is the easiest box ever, I could literally make boxes all day.

Thanks for stopping by.......

One more Baby Shower Item...

I took about 150 pictures at the shower. I wanted to share them with Rhonda (mother to be), Kristi & Laura (other two hostesses). I downloaded all of the pictures to a CD, made copies for each of them and made a holder/sleeve. I had some of the paper from the invitations and a few more little airplanes already stamped and embossed so the project came together quickly. Here's what I came up with.

To make this you can start with a 8.5x11 sheet of card stock. (I used 12x12). Cut it down to 5 1/8 x 11. Score at 2.5 and 7.5 inches. Take the left over strip and cut it down to 7 1/8. Score at 1" on both ends and fold. Folded flaps are what adheres to the middle panel between the horizonal score lines and holds the CD in place. I used a coordinating striped piece instead of the same paper to add a little contrast. I printed the wording on the computer (same font & colors as invite & other stuff). Lastly, I added a second strip of paper to the flap (for decoration), adhered the airplane mounted on the scallop circle and finished it off with a piece of light pink stitched grosgrain ribbon tied in a simple knot.

Baby Shower Highlights

Yesterday was Rhonda's Baby Shower. Everything was lovely. Rhonda received two SUV loads of gifts from friends and family, she's all set for the baby's arrival. Here's a little slide show....