Gracin's Angel

I love making these little Guardian Angels from Bird Brain Designs. In the past I have stitched out the designs, most of the time with Turkey Red Perle Cotton.

I wanted to make another one for my grandson, Gracin for his dedication day at church. However, I am having difficulties with my right hand so stitching is out of the question right now. I have turned other stitching designs into applique projects before. You can read the blog posts about them here and here. So I decided to make a machine applique angel for him. 

All of the angels looked like girls to me so I did a little adjusting to the pattern. Here is a picture of the original angel I chose and how I adapted it to look more like a boy. It also shows the fabrics I used. I have been saving jeans for years. I chose a pair of my husband's to use for the overalls. I thought that would give even more special meaning to the piece.

I traced the pattern pieces onto fusible web. I traced the entire shape of the body rather than breaking it down into smaller pieces. I actually ended up tracing a second body piece so I had one for the front of the angel and one for the back. Even though I could have used the circle from the body piece as the head, I decided to trace just the circle portion of it onto the fusible web for the face.

I then fused all of the pieces onto the appropriate fabrics. Here are all of the pieces cut and ready to assemble. The wings are cut from a small scrap of batting.

I positioned the wings where I wanted them on top of the back. I like to use an applique pressing sheet when I do fusible applique. You can see a good example of this in this blog post. I assembled all of the pieces for the front of the angel onto the pressing sheet. Then I put that whole piece on top of the back and batting and fused it together.

I used a blanket stitch to stitch around all of the fabric pieces. This is my favorite setting for this because the bite is relatively small. With tiny pieces I don't like the stitch to come in too far into the shape.

I free hand, free motioned a heart onto one side of the wings. It is really hard to get the batting stabilized enough to do that. I don't love the heart but he won't care.

I wrote a poem I found appropriate for the dedication inside a card. Then I wrote a little message to him on the back of the angel. Here's what he looks like all finished. I think he's pretty cute.

Happy Sewing, Stitching and Creating,

Carol

Bib for a Baby Boy

There is a big baby boom in my life.  As a result I've been collecting baby themed patterns for awhile since my daughters are having babies and so are their friends. This is one that I picked up in case someone I know has a baby boy.

The son of a very good friend of mine recently had a baby boy. The mommy and daddy are both lawyers so this pattern came to mind. I decided to do the Business Bib. These are the fabrics I chose.

I used two of the black and white fabrics from the Black Licorice Bits Fabric Collection and Kona Black.

Here's the finished product. If you look closely at the tie, you might see the "L" monogram. It didn't show up as well as I'd have liked. The fabric is a little too busy but I thought it was still a nice little detail.

When I auditioned the fabrics and decided what was going where I thought it would work. Now that it is done, I like it even better than what I envisioned. Don't you love when that happens?!