The Sewing Mom

I’m progressing in the sewing of fleece blankets that I’m planning on selling at our booth in July. I was able to use my serger a week or so ago and finished the edges. This is a photo of one of the blankets as it’s being run through the serger.

Yesterday I spent time sewing the lace and trim to the edges of the blankets. This red one is now finished and the blue one is also finished, I added fleece binding to it instead of lace, I think it looks more boyish that way!

I have two more fleece blankets that are almost done. I am going to do the machine embroidery on them today and then they will be finished. Then I will be back to sewing a few fabric purses and bags.

I’m working hard to have a productive sewing week, which also means I am having to spend less time at the computer. That’s not an easy thing for me since I am totally addicted to my computer! I am still checking in though and will reply to all comments eventually!

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I sewed the lace edging on to 4 fleece blankets today and am now getting ready to embroider on 3 of them. I also sewed binding onto one blanket and it is finished, I had all ready embroidered it a while back.

I’m trying to use a variety of bunny designs, I don’t like all of the blankets looking the same. I now have 2 new designs downloaded onto my card reader and am getting ready to set up my machine to do the embroidery. Hopefully I’ll have pictures of the completed projects by tomorrow.

I better hurry, my daughter’s 6th grade awards ceremoy is tonight!

My sister has created her own pillowcase pattern and they are really coming out so cute! She made these for her two granddaughters and embroidered their names on them with her new embroidery machine. I just love the fabrics she used.

What do you think?

I’m still recovering from the crazy, hectic couple of weeks I had finalizing plans with my Destination Imagination team and making sure they were ready for the regional tournament. The one thing I did myself as a surprise for them was to embroider t-shirts with their team names on the fronts and individual names on the back. The girls actually designed the shirts, but they thought a professional was doing the work. I opted to do it myself with shirts I bought at Joann’s and using my own embroidery sewing machine.I’ve posted pictures of the progress of those shirts throughout last week, but I never got around to posting the end result, so, here it is!

This one is the back of one of the shirts, before I took out the basting stitches (the rectangular around the name).

And finally, the completed shirt being modeled .

I know this is supposed to be wordless, but this project took up ALL of my time last week and I feel the need to show off what I spent so much time doing. This photo is of the front of the t-shirt as the last design “Kandy Kueens” has been added. I will show the back of the shirt later.

After placing the t-shirt in the hoop and connecting the hoop to the embroidery arm on my sewing machine, I simply have to tell the machine which design I am doing and it reads that design from the d-card that I’ve inserted into it. I thread the 1st color of the design through the sewing machine and then push the “fix” button. This will tell the machine to baste a box on the fabric that basically outlines where the design will be.

Basting is very helpful when embroidering a fabric that is laying on top of the hoop. It help keep the fabric in position. After the basting is done, I press start and the machine begins stitching the design itself. The machine will do all of the work, I only have to change the thread when it is a color change and make sure there is plenty of thread in the bobbin.

This photo was taken after the first design was stitched, the candy castle.

After creating the designs for the t-shirts, I had to download them and then use the d-card I pictured two posts down to tell my sewing machine which design to embroider. I do this simply by placing the d-card in the side of my machine. Instead of a d-card, some sewing machines use a USB memory stick, or some use a floppy disk (older machines). I would personally love to upgrade my machine to the USB, but it’s cost is several thousand more dollars than I all ready have invested, so don’t think that will be happening any time soon!

Before placing the fabric (t-shirt) in the sewing machine, I have to place stabilizer in the hoop. In the case of a t-shirt, because it’s a stretchy fabric, I use a sticky stabilizer. The stabilizer goes into the hoop and the fabric gets laid on top and “stuck” in place. The hoop then gets attached to the embroidery arm which has all ready been attached to the sewing machine.

This first picture is the fabric or t-shirt as it’s been placed on the hoop. The hoop can’t be seen because of the excess t-shirt fabric and the wet look is the moisture coming through the fabric from the dampened stabilizer. The second photo is after the hoop has been attached to the sewing machine.

Last week I spent the entire week creating t-shirts for my Destination Imagination team which consists of 6 girls.  They had made a rough design telling me what they wanted and picked their shirt color and I went from there.

The team had named themselves the Kandy Kueens and their entire skit was centered around the “Kandy Kingdom” game they had designed.  Their set consisted of, among other things, a rather larger Kandy Kastle.  Amazingly, I actually found a candy castle design that I purchased while at an embroidery class and then used that as the center of the design on the fronts of their shirts.  I then designed the lettering using my Viking 3D Studio Embroidery software on my computer.  From there, I download my completed designs onto what is called a “d-card” and then insert that card into my sewing machine.  That is how my sewing machine knows what I want it to do.

Here are a few pictures of the process.  The first is the design being created on my computer.  The second is transferring a completed design to the d-card software.  Finally, a picture of the d-card and the d-card reader that attaches to my computer.