Happy Summer!

Posted by on June 15, 2012

Happy Summer! I hope you are all having a splendid laid back summer. When was the last time you used the word splendid? 1964? We survived VBS, have been enjoying some great pool time and are not about to strangle each other yet. I normally send at least 2 of my kids to summer school (2 days/week) but this year with bible school and beach trips and other goings-ons, I decided to keep them all at home. So far so good! I adore my kids, but we all know being with them 24/7 can be trying at times. Overall they are getting along great which helps my sanity! G just almost took Mallory’s eye out with a diving stick but other than that we are good.

Moving on…. here is an example of what fabric can do to an applique. This is an OOLLLLDDD sample of our Fat Fish design. It’s cute (and probably matched something), but…

not as cute as this!! I left the fin off and this Michael Miller fabric matches some shorts I got at an overstock sale for around 8 bucks. I need to replace my website photo BADLY! I really need to go through and redo LOTS of old designs.

My precious model. She just loves for me to take pics (not).

Here is a new Swirly Cupcake design we listed recently, and I did it on this Kas-Wear dress. The orange and hot pink fabric is Fabric Finders tri-check. I got it recently at Beth’s Heirloom Sewing. I love orange and hot pink or orange and any color. Anyway, you can find the Kas-Wear at Berlins Online! Mal’s head is cut off in this photo because I was trying to take her picture and she did not want me to (and was crying). She wore this as a swim coverup. We were probably headed to the pool and I stopped her for a photo shoot. Is there anything cuter than little 4 yr old knees??

Better! This dress makes a great swim coverup or it would even make a nice lightweight summer gown! Kas-Wear has some GREAT dresses, tees and other blanks in great colors! I’m monogramming a couple more for Mallory right now in lavender (w/ lime mono) and hot pink (also w/ lime mono).

I also appliqued this towel recently and the cute towel came from Costco! Who doesn’t love polka dots? The fabric I used is Michael Miller. I THINK it came from TJs Fabric.

Today is the last day for our 50% off sale ~ www.appliquecafe.com. I’ve seen a lot of fall designs come through the carts. As hot as it is, I know it’ll be football season before we know it! The font I used for SALE is Cheri from Jolsonsdesigns.com. I hope Jolsons has sold several of these alphabets because I have had a ton of people ask me what it was! We do not sell any fonts at this time, so most of the ones I use are like this one from Jolsons and I also have several from Embroidery Boutique!

 Have a great weekend! The sale will be “taken down” first thing in the morning!

Filed Under: Applique Cafe, Design, Fabric, Products, Shopping | Tagged: Tagged With: , , , ,

Tea anyone?

Posted by on June 7, 2012

My BIL (Jeff’s bro) got married this past weekend up in Birmingham, so my mom and I headed up Friday morning to hit a few stores sans kids. Jeff brought the kids up Friday after lunch. We had a fabulous weekend with all the wedding festivities, spending time w/ family and in Birmingham in general. It really is a neat place (with SO MUCH SHOPPING) and I left feeling that I really need to visit the Ham more often. It’s only about an hour 15 minute drive from my house. I waste more time than that in carpool on any given school day. We are so happy to have a new addition to the family and hope to visit them in B’ham a lot! 🙂

My favorite place that I have found lately is Harmony Landing in Homewood (also on Facebook). I have always loved At Home in Homewood, and HL is right next door. I LOVE At Home, but sometimes when I go in there I feel like I would have to bulldozer my house and start over to get “that look”. It’s very cool and chic and restoration hardware-ish (if you’ve ever seen their book,imeancatalog.  Harmony Landing is more realistic for me (and my budget) and a lot of their pieces are original and different but still fit in to my home. Anywho… I went in looking for a piece to go on a blank wall in our kitchen and left with said piece + this bench to go in front of the windows in our kitchen. I’m now in the market for some pillows for the bench!

This was our kitchen BEFORE. On our now blank wall we had cabinets on top and bottom (on the left). I sure don’t miss all that oak…

Here is after, and for the past 10+ months I’ve been searching (patiently) for something to go here.

Here is my Harmony Landing find. It’s sort of hard to tell what it looks like at night. Our kitchen is a lot of taupe + the dark stained island and dark kitchen table/chairs. The new pieces are a good mixture of both taupe and a little dark plus some other colors thrown in there too. Luckily we had 2 cars in B’ham. We made it home with both pieces and all 3 kids.

 I am also now in the market for something to go on top of and ON the “cabinet” we will call it. I have a little credit with a couple of artist friends so I’m hoping to cash in here soon. (p.s. replacing these knobs with something darker too). Maybe  lamp too?

 Moral of the story… if you are in Birmingham check out Harmony Landing in Homewood. I saw a couple of coffee tables that looked neat so I’m hoping to go back with my July house budget! If you are in Homewood also eat at Urban Cookhouse ~ yummy! There is also one at the Summit near PB (Pottery Barn).

This week we have been recovering from our weekend in Birmingham and I have also been finishing up a big order of the Sweet Tea/Unsweet Tea ribbons (see this post). I was able to knock out 4 at a time using my fast frames and sticky stabilizer (from Sewingmachine.com ~ commercial backing). After each ribbon I would center on the next ribbon and start sewing again. This is Bobo font from Monogram Wizard Plus and I cut my ribbon about 20″ long. When finished I “singed” the ends w/ a lighter (or “fire” as my little ones would say). As you can see I wrap my fast frames w/ the sticky stabilizer (see bottom of frame) and pin the ribbon in place so it won’t move. The sticky peels right off, leaving no residue on my frames (several people on FB commented as to how clean my frames were).

Here is a shot of doing it the WRONG way! A) my sticky and ribbons are on the wrong side of the fast frame and B) the fast frame is upside down. I had to redo the whole thing.

Fast Frames have a “dip” on them, so when you attach the frame to the “arm”, the dip slants downward so the frame is actually even with your arm.

I use fast frames mostly for bags and things I can’t hoop!

 Here are my completed 24 total sweet and unsweet tea ribbons. They are really easy to do, but are also time consuming in that you have to cut all your ribbon, pin it all in place on the sticky, sew each ribbon, remove the ribbon and remove the excess sticky in between all those letters (on the back), singe the ends of each ribbon, etc. I’m glad to finally have them all done!

 This particular order is for my husband’s god mother who saw them at the wedding shower we went to and immediately put in an order for 8 sets. This weekend she upped it to 12 so I spent most of yesterday finishing up! The ribbon is 1.5″ black grosgrain ribbon from Hobby Lobby (1/2 off, of course).

Have a great rest of the week! I’ll be sampling new designs tomorrow!

Filed Under: How To, Misc, Shopping | Tagged: Tagged With: ,

Summer…. almost

Posted by on May 23, 2012

It’s almost summer around here. Browder gets out of school Friday and then we’ll call it officially summer! The other 2 got out this past Friday. I’ve managed to do a little work ~ a few odds and ends and things that people have dropped off. Yesterday I found “this guy” on my sewing machine. Luckily he doesn’t bite, but wasn’t much help in changing out thread colors. 

 I monogrammed a couple of these yesterday (teacher gifts) and thought they were so cute! They came from Target and I think they also come in at least 1 other color (royal blue). Love the pocket for the cell phone and such. There is also a “pocket” per say up top that goes OVER the chair (I guess if it will fit). See the circle insert photo on the bottom right corner. There is nothing more aggravating than trying to lounge and a gust of wind blows your towel over your head. Problem solved!

I did a hot pink Specs “H” on the top of these. The H is about 5″ tall (maxed out my 5×7 hoop).

 Not much else going on around here. Our calendar is thinning out and we’re looking forward to summer. I am also looking forward to my children adjusting to summer and sleeping past 7:00. Hopefully it’ll happen! The around-the-house to-do list is long. I need to organize closets (winter to summer) and HANG PICTURES! Maybe by our 1 year mark this house will look more like a home.

Have a great week! Oh I DID work on some exciting pieces last week for a certain magazine photo shoot for TJ’s Fabrics, but I can’t show them to you just yet! Stay tuned!!

Filed Under: Misc, Shopping | Tagged: Tagged With:
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