Candy Canes smocked on a Tshirt

This Shirt goes with the Candy Cane Skirt pictured here: http://craftyjnet.blogspot.com/2008/11/2-hour-candy-cane-skirt.html

My daughter loves them both!

For this project, I took a ready made Tshirt and sewed in a pleated insert...hand smocked the design, and she has a nice shirt to wear to school & shopping. Candy Canes smocking plate is from Ellen McCarn's Candy-licious

Christmas Pajama Pants

I cut these out several days ago, but finally got a picture of them - the girls LOVE their new Pajama Pants...

Free Embroidery Downloads

Lots of them, and they are cute too!

http://www.bunnycup.com/sets.aspx?status=retired

Luggage Tags

Made these for my mother's painting friends for her to give them for Christmas -- you just attach them to the handle of your luggage, and I guarantee you will be able to find it at baggage claim!

Green side is corduroy, Initial is machine embroidered

Embroidery machine frustrations

You may think the tractor longall is cute, but I am having problems with my embroidery machine -- I have a Singer Futura embroidery/sewing machine and I think I am going to have to take it to the shop if I want to embroider anymore -- it pulls the bobbin thread up sometimes, sometimes it stops in the middle of a project and quits -- sometimes it doesn't sew in the hoop where you have told it to -- sometimes you change color and it gets a little "off" in the layout -- but all of this is sometimes... I wonder if it is the laptop circa 1999 that is running it, or the fact that I use it almost daily for what, 2 years now? and have never had it serviced. on a non-embroidery complaint, I press the presser foot and it does one stitch and stops on sometimes basis too, and today for some reason my needle is sewing about an 1/16 of an inch to the right rebooted it and it recentered right back offcenter...ugh!

I have certainly gotten my $500 out of this machine, and I wonder now, should I ask for a laptop for Christmas? or maybe just take it to the repair shop for "upkeep" -- anyway, enough complaining about it, I am so blessed, look on this blog and see all of the beautiful things my machine can do with my assistance...it will keep on running and I'll keep churning out all of this pretty stuff -- oh, my girls are so lucky

Reversable Tractor Embroidered longall

Cut this out last night and got it embroidered and finished off today -- this is for a teacher at my daughter's school -- for her grandson -- the request was for something to wear Christmas but that he could wear it other times too. I think this is adorable.

Snowman Aline Top

Made this for my daughter this morning in less than an hour -- I will be making more of these cute tops -- I had forgotten how easy these were to make!

Machine Smocked insert in a Tshirt

Debra at Palmettokids.net machine smocked this design on an insert and I put it in this Tshirt -- Didn't it turn out to be an adorable holiday shirt? Machine Smocking design is by Elizabeth Embroidery

Machine smocking in embroidery done by an embroidery machine on pleated fabric to look like hand smocking -- in a fraction of the time of doing it by hand!

Four Size 2 Bishops ready to smock

Made these for my friend in Louisiana who inspired me to try the ready to smock dresses about 2 and a half years ago...she usually sends me fabric and I put together ready to smock dresses for her. She is a wonderful smocker and you can see a lot of her work on that palmettokids.net website.

The bright pink ones are made of a high quality pique fabric. The light pink is a tiny corduroy, ooh so soft, and the brown bishop is a cool corduroy with little horses machine embroidered on it -- super cool! I could only pleat a couple of rows on this one because I didn't want to run the horses through the pleater.

Her little girl is going to be adorable!

Twice Baked Sweet Potato Recipe

http://www.kraftfoods.com/kf/recipes/twice-baked-sweet-potatoes-111250.aspx

Try this recipe for Twice Baked Sweet Potatoes -- They turned out really yummy, and they looked just like the picture on the website -- My oldest daughter even ate the skin!

Especially pay attention to how they are baked -- usually it takes over an hour to bake the big sweet potatoes, but they slice them in half and bake them face down on a pan...cut the time to 35 minutes -- that is FAST for a baked sweet potato!

Turkey Game

My sister gave me this fun idea -- you make several turkeys with construction paper, google eyes, and a slice of a toilet paper or paper towel roll, then make the game board with a lane for each turkey - each turkey is assigned a number on the dice and roll the dice and if you roll your number then you move up one - first turkey to the end is the winner -- a kid could actually play this by themselves...We colored our lanes to match our turkeys.

If you could make a dice that had the colors on it that would be even better, but we were too excited to try it out to wait -- black & orange turkey won the first 2 games!

The 2-hour Candy Cane Skirt

Got this fabric for a buck a yard when walmart in our town was closing the fabric department (sniff)

Didn't know what I was going to do with it at the time, but this month I learned how to insert the smocked panels in a Tshirt so I have this red Tshirt and was trying to figure out what to smock on it...decided to make a bottom to match and now I know I want to smock candy canes on it --

This skirt is an adaptation of the Simplicity Sewing pattern for Dummies # 4206 -- if you sew for little girls, you need this pattern...peasant shirts (easily lenghtened for night gowns), cool goucho pants, shorts, and this skirt -- I made it a skort by sewing the included shorts pattern underneath...you can see my blog entry on how to do that:

http://craftyjnet.blogspot.com/2008/03/cheetah-girls-3-tiered-skirt.html

Anyway, my daughter loves this and I wonder how long you have to wait to wear Christmas clothes? Is the rule Thanksgiving?

Floral Corduroy Bishop

Made this ready to smock dress for a client -- for some reason I just love these sleeves with this fabric...adorable!

Smocked Ladybugs on a Teal blue Jumpsuit

I LOVE this outfit. I was asked by my friend to come up with a first birthday outfit for her daughter. Her party is themed ladybugs. She wanted a teal jumpsuit type of outfit so we did the hot pink & black ladybugs on it -- they are TOO CUTE aren't they?

I altered pattern simplicity 9967 by not doing sleeves or a collar so I had to get creative...I lined the bodice and made the neckline a little bigger, did the bottom of the legs a little different, but it all worked out. Now I hope it fits - if it doesn't we'll just have to make it fit somehow.

The smocking is from Little Memories "Bugs & Kisses". I of course, altered it a little doing beads instead of smocked black dots on the bugs and adding beads to the ends of the antenna...what do you think of the final product?

Two red Tshirts with Smocked Inserts

I am pretty excited about this new thing I tried - they go together rather quickly too if you have ready made piping --

These are ready to smock and the larger one belongs to me and the smaller one on the right to Debra at palmettokids.net -- The piping wasn't quite the same color as the larger shirt so I used the white piping on it to match the insert. It definitely looks different, but I haven't decided which one looks better...

Also, here is a look at what the inside of the Tshirt looks like -- these will be great to sell as ready to smock because you have full access to the back of your work...

I'm too excited about my new skill!!!

Freestyle Apple Tart

Got this recipe from the http://www.kraftfoods.com/ website - yummy, quick and super easy!

1 ready-to-use refrigerated pie crust (1/2 of 15-oz. pkg.)
4 oz. (1/2 of 8-oz. pkg.) Cream Cheese, softened
3 red and/or green apples (1-1/4 lb.), thinly sliced
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 Tbsp. flour
1 tsp. cinnamon sugar
1 cup thawed Whipped Topping

Make It:
HEAT oven to 450ºF. Line 9-inch pie plate with crust. Carefully spread cream cheese in 6-inch circle in center.
TOSS apples with sugar and flour; spoon over cream cheese. Fold crust partially over apples. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.
BAKE 25 min., covering loosely with foil for the last 5 min. Cool. Serve with COOL WHIP. Refrigerate leftovers.

Brown Striped Top

I made the striped top, the shirt underneath and the cord pants underneath are 'sigh' from the store.




This is a shortened mary de top that I smocked a geometric on so my older daughter will have a pretty fall outfit -- I can't wait for her to get home from school today to try it on -- I think the pants are a little too long for her -- but hey, she can maybe wear it next fall too!