Summer

It is officially summer at Applique Cafe! My kids finished school on Friday and we spent the weekend at the lake through Monday. Yesterday was officially the first day of our summer, and today we christened the neighborhood pool for the first time. For some reason it doesn’t really feel like summer to me? Other than NOT having to get up early, pack any snacks or get anyone dressed for school, it doesn’t feel like summer. I think this past school year flew by so quickly that it hasn’t hit me yet!

After doing about 24 graduation towels in the past couple of weeks, here are a few things I’ve been working on. Below is an outfit I did yesterday (the shirt part of the outfit) for our cute little neighbor who is turning 2. She loves fish, so I went with our Girly Fish design. The top and knit shorts, which are adorable, are from Monkey Tails Blanks. MTB is based out of Montgomery, so when my neighbor asked for recs on a cute top or dress to wear, I sent her to their website. When ordering, you can also order a swatch of fabric to coordinate your appliques with your bottoms. I honestly wasn’t sure how the stripes would look on a fish design, but I love how this turned out! Knit is suprisingly easy to work with and I use Heat N Bond Lite on it which fuses the knit to my shirt and the outcome is a clean crisp applique. Font: Monogram Wizard Plus “Happy” (my absolute fave for girls).

I do monogramming for a local gift shop, and today on the machine I had a semi large cooler bag to do. My machine is typically on a 1 file drawer piece of furniture, and this is the second time in years that I’ve needed a real multi needle machine stand. The cooler was a bit too bulky to cram under the machine, so I straddled my machine on my stand and my tool chest. It worked! I watched it the whole time holding my breath, believe me!

Yay! (Monogram Wizard Plus “Curly Q” font)

Other than the above, I have a short list of old designs that I’m re-sewing. Sometimes sewing a design with new fabric brings it back to life! Here’s our Sea Turtle, which is like our 113th design (we now have close to 800 designs on our website).

Our Simple Turtle, #102.

Slide (#140)

Our Snail, #91!

I have a few more I’m working on, doing a couple each day. The above multi dot fabric used in the Sea Turtle and Snail is from Alfie & Bettie, Gumballs Pink. It’s super cute and I’ve been asked several times what it is.

Here are several cute new fabrics I got from TJ’s Fabrics. The small quatrefoils are from Fabric Finders. The larger quatrefoils are Riley Blake! I really like the colors on the larger quatrefoils and can’t wait to use them! Someone asked if these were replacing CHEVRONS! Not sure, but they are cute!

I will close with several pics of the kids, including MAGGIE, from this past weekend and the end of the school year! Yes, those are real ducks. Our neighbors at the lake bought and raised them in St. Augustine, FL and brought them to the lake this past weekend to release them. They were fun to watch! Have a great rest-of-the-week!