Adventures in housewifery: Cooking, crafting, and not a lot of cleaning
Because of course, I immediately found all the nerdy embroidery files I could.
Bookmarks!
Dice box!
I need rivets to finish this and a few other things. I have them, just haven’t fixed them yet.
Live Long And Prosper!
I did some sewing, of course, for my Disney girl’s trip and thought I should share it! The first three are embroideries that I was playing around with with a possible intention to making something for the trip. They didn’t get made into anything, but they are Disney themed and pretty to look at. The first one is, of course, Cinderella’s Carriage.
The second one is the Beast’s rose. I accidently put part of the pink where the golden lines was supposed to go. I think it still looks good though.
This third one is Ariel, but the colors are slightly off from what I wanted them to be. I really liked the background fabric though and wanted to keep the colors matching that. I will maybe redo it. K said she liked it, so perhaps she will get something made it with. I hadn’t cut the extra threads yet in the picture.
I made this shirt for Disney bounding, which is where you dress up themed as a character without actually being dressed in a character costume. I went as Rapunzel, because, of course I did. 🙂 I braided my hair and put flowers all down my braid. The purple skort in the picture below has pockets and matched the purple in the shirt perfectly. I also had a sun necklace and a set of frying pan earrings. In the movie, which is where these images on the shirt are from, Rapunzel wields a frying pan several times to great effect. It was the day it rained so in the next picture, I have my cozy Disney hoodie I bought so I wouldn’t freeze. We kept saying we didn’t intend to bring the cold winter weather from home with us to Florida.
I made the purple skort by combining two separate patterns. I used my favorite skort pattern and then added pockets from a gathered skort pattern I had. It turned out super cute, although I made have to redo the waist as it is a little loose.
I made this rocket shirt on a whim and was excited to wear it to Epcot. It’s very comfy and cute! I liked getting to wear something science themed there. I also was excited to wear something I made on the day we went to the Festival of the Arts! It seemed like it fit with the theme as well. Both the Rapunzel tee and the rocket tee are from Peek a boo Patterns, but I think they may have retired the pattern, as I can’t find it on their website to purchase any more.
I also made another skort that was accidently reminiscent of Jasmine or Merida. It was a darker teal with gold dots on it. I liked it and it was made out of athletic material (as was the purple) so it kept me nice and cool. I don’t have a good picture of it, unfortunately. It’s super cute though! It’s a little gathered, so it looks like I’m wearing a cute gathered skirt, but it’s got the shorts and the pockets too.
It was fun to have an almost completely handmade wardrobe to wear on the trip and I think I’m getting my sewing mojo back. I hope you enjoyed hearing about them!
Hello! I’ve been having fun and getting more confident with my embroidery machine. Oh yeah, did I say I bought one? We’re going to blame my Mother in Law as usual for most of my expensive sewing purchases. 🙂 I have wanted an embroidery machine for a while. Since my vintage green sewing machine is named Shirley, I named embroidery machine Florence. It makes me smile!
So this year, I embroidered a bunch of Christmas gifts for people. Please excuse some of them being still in the hoop. I forgot to take pictures of the final product, as between being sick, switching jobs, and the normal holiday rush, it was just not something I focused on.
This one was for the Husband. It suits him perfectly and I just need to find a good frame for it. It’s supposed to look like one of those embroidery samplers, but snarky. He has assured me not everything is for spite… but I know a few things have been. Mostly on my behalf lately, which I’m okay with. *bwhahaha
A Scandinavian deer for my parents. Isn’t it pretty! It was so fascinating to see how the machine sewed everything and I love how it turned out. The pattern is a set of Scandinavian animals, so I’m excited to use more of them in the future.
This one is from the same pack as the deer and really was one of the main reasons I bought that set of embroidery patterns. I had a grand vision of making everyone tiny little embroidered ornaments this year, but only managed a few of them. I do like them though, so maybe everyone will get them next year instead. So you know… forget I said anything if I’m in the habit of sending you presents. 😉 I did have a lot of fun trying out different color combinations with them. I do need to iron that wrinkle out and reframe it, but they came out super cute!
This mint chip ornament went to K2 because she said she liked it. Sometimes when I’m unsure of something it will go to the person who actually does like it. I did too, but I wasn’t sure if anyone else would get the mint chip theme.
Look! A bookmark! Something that I almost never use for its intended purpose. This is made of only thread and water soluble stabilizer to make free standing lace. It was one of three? four? attempts. I did not throw my very expensive embroidery machine off the house for how annoying it was to make, as it wasn’t the machine’s fault. The stabilizer was like thicker plastic cling film and it just kept shredding itself, as you put it in the hoop by itself with no fabric. It also got shoved into the needle plate at one point by the needle, causing me to have to take the needle plate completely off to get it out. There’s apparently a different kind of stabilizer I need instead that’s much easier to use and more fabric like. This stuff would work on top of thicker towels, I think, where it’s not by itself so I am going to save it for those projects. I may have a free standing lace gnome pattern for bookmarks too… 🙂
My friend K1 got another blue towel with an embroidered chicken too, but it says something rather rude and I thought I should protect my poor, innocent, and noble mother from seeing it. 😉 K1 loved it though as it fit her chickens to a tee, so I am satisfied. Fun fact, I got these towels and some other ones from the quilt expo and they are very good quality! These tea pots make my heart enormously happy and I want to make a whole apron set with all of them on it. I think I have 8 or 9 of them. it’s hard to pick a favorite, but I’m a sucker for adorable mushrooms, even if I am allergic to nettles.
Also from the quilt show tea towels were these two that I made for my mother. I completely fooled her too, she didn’t think I’d made them! Both of these designs came from the set that came installed on the machine and I was excited to use them. I fiddled with the colors on the tree. It was originally mostly red, but I wanted to have it match the green towel. I think they both came out looking very nice!
Probably my favorite and most complicated Christmas present were these dice boxes for my older brother and SIL. The blue set of dice has little tiny lutes imbedded in them, since they were for my SIL. My brother got the brown dice box and swirly dice. I also made them this towel with a funny saying on it. If you roll a 20 on these 20 sided dice in table top games, it generally means you’ve made it and whatever you’re trying to do succeeds. If you roll a 1, you’re essentially dead if it was an attack move, or fail at whatever you were trying to do.
The dice boxes were made all with the embroidery machine! They are an “in the hoop” project, meaning the entire thing was done in the embroidery hoop itself. I just cut them out after they were done. I’ll have to make more and take video because it was super cool!
I sent this kitchen towel along with the dice boxes too and it makes me giggle. I wanted to experiment with the variegated rainbow embroidery thread I bought and it came out looking really cool. The thread looks fuzzy in the lighting below, but it isn’t actually in real life.
I have some more embroidery projects too, but they were made for other things or as tests, so I’ll have to make another post and maybe show some video of the machine working. It is pretty magical!
I hope you enjoyed this glimpse of Christmas fun! I’m looking forward to showing off more projects as I get more confident. Also, if you have any ideas on what to embroider, I’ll take them! I only need so many dishtowels!