Archives for January 2010

I took these pics one day last week from my car on my phone! I am a lot excited about JoAnn coming to town! Of course today I went by and there were no letters? Not sure what’s up with that, but I believe they are supposed to open Feb. 6? Today I spent my no-kid time looking for stabilizer since I can’t seem to find my Sulky Cutaway Plus in stock at Hancocks!! That’s what I get for bragging about how well I like it!!!!!! I went to Hancocks, Hobby Lobby and then ended up at the Sew & Vac store where I spent $23 on stabilizer (versus my $11 maximum on a roll of Sulky and usually less when I have a coupon or it is on sale). I got a Floriani Cutaway Medium Fusible, which I’m sure is great and it will eliminate the need for spray adhesive when preparing the shirt to hoop since you iron it on, then cut it away after you’re done. But, it hurt my checkbook to pay full price for it! I’m seriously down with sales and 40/50% off coupons, so paying full price was hard! But, I even called the Sewing Machine store in West Point and they were out of it too! I have to take my PE750 in for service so I figured if they had it, I’d cruise on over. No such luck! I may have to have a talk with the JoAnn stabilizer-buyer to make sure they keep it in stock! I love the sweet ladies who work at Hancocks, but when I ask about stuff being out of stock, 90% of the time they aren’t too helpful!

I’ve had one or two (or the same person) request a big carrot to go w/ the bunny. This carrot is from http://www.embroidery-boutique.com/ and of course I thought of this b/c I sampled it! I’m not sure what other way there is to do a carrot, so whoever wants a carrot, will this one work?? Sometimes people leave comments on my blog and it takes some serious investigative work to reply to that person, so I thought I’d just post it here! Someone also asked me about the pink Monag shirt and it is still available! I just had no way of responding other than posting on here!

And another sneak peek at another new AC design! They will hopefully be listed by the end of the week!

My embroidery friend Brandy said that she loves these double curved embroidery scissors found at http://www.havelssewing.com/! I haven’t looked for them locally, but may try to find or order them and give them a try!! Looks pretty cool to me!

In other news, we have been approved to list our applique designs on http://www.swakembroidery.com/! We’ve been on a waiting list and had to send 2 designs to be sampled. Evidently we passed! It’s going to be a bit of a process to get everything together to send to them to list, and we may even start with our best sellers to see how it goes! We still want everyone to shop at http://www.appliquecafe.com/, but SWAK might be a good avenue for those embroidery people who have never heard of AC! Can’t hurt to have our designs on such a great site!! I know when I’m looking for a design for myself or for someone else, I usually start there b/c they have a little bit of EVERYTHING!

I had someone e-mail me today with simple questions such as “what kind of scissors do you use?” and “what kind of stabilizer do you use?” and also, this person asked if I had considered a tutorial on stabilizer and/or hooping. I actually did a word doc a while ago which shows how I prepare and hoop a shirt. I’ll see if I can copy and paste it to a blog post. Not sure if I can? So here are the scissors I use! A big pair for cutting fabric, stabilizer and all that stuff! The small pair on the right is the pair of scissors that came with my Brother sewing machine. I had 2 pair, but one walked off (or got thrown away!) I bought the small pair on the left, but the ends are almost too sharp and they tend to catch the shirt or fabric I’m appliqueing on (when I am trimming the fabric). This can cause you to cut the shirt, which then requires a little fabric glue and a prayer! The satin stitch usually covers it up and the glue keeps it from causing any real damage, but overall I prefer the right small pair – the ends aren’t too sharp! Exciting stuff, eh?

I believe in using a fusible product! Wonder Under is a popular one, but I prefer Heat N Bond Lite! It comes on the bolt so I buy it by the yard ($2.19/yd at Hancocks). I usually get 5 or so yards at a time and it lasts me a while! It comes with instructions and I iron it on the applique fabric. It makes trimming nice and clean (cuts back on loose threads) and when you’re done, the idea is that you iron over your finished applique and it fuses the applique to your shirt! It’s not a perfect science, but it works pretty well and I think it makes the applique look much nicer – cuts down on bubbles!

So I just cut a piece and iron it on my fabric…

And you probably can’t tell from this next picture, but after you peel the paper away, it leaves a shiny layer of the Heat N Bond. The reason I prefer it to Wonder Under is because the paper peels off very easily – just pick at a corner and peel away! And, when you peel the paper off the layer of HNB is easily visible. With Wonder Under I found it hard sometimes to peel the paper away, and it leaves a cobweb type product on your fabric. A lot of people love and swear by Wonder Under… I just prefer Heat N Bond (Lite – it comes in a heavy weight too). I also spray a light layer of Sulky Spray Adhesive on this piece of fabric before I put it in place for my tackdown stitch. That just helps the fabric stay smooth on the shirt for the tackdown stitch.

Here is the Birthday Frog (coming soon) after my tackdown stitch and after I’ve trimmed the fabric away. As you can see I cut pretty close to the tackdown stitch!

And after the satin stitch, facial features and birthday hat, here is the finished product! I sampled 6 new designs since last night and Jeff is due home from his ski trip in less than an hour!! There is a change or two to be made and we’ll send the new stuff off for ART conversion, then list them later in the week!

I got an order this weekend for 11 t-shirts, so today I hit 3 of the 4 Walmarts in Montgomery! I managed to find 6 out of the 11 I need, and also came across these $2 (!!!!!) Faded Glory t-shirts at the ATL Hwy Walmart for you Montgomery people. You can’t beat $2, and that was the price on the tag (not on sale or anything). They also had plain navy & plain red for $2 (gray too). I bought one of each color of these for Garrison. Not sure what I’m going to do with them but for $2 I couldn’t pass them up! Maybe a simple monogram, or maybe I can figure out an applique that might work!? I’ll post a pic when I figure it out!

Here are the bibs I got in Friday – I have 6 of each color. This is a horrible picture, but you get the idea! I did the AC Owl on a pink one and posted it recently. These are great bibs! A simple red name on the blue would be cute too!

This is TOTALLY random, but I got these house shoes from Target for Christmas (WOO HOO exciting) and Friday I bought a brown backup pair b/c I love them so much!! Is that a sign of getting old? Having backup house shoes?? And they are on sale so the brown pair was less than $9!! I have worn these to take B to school and if I could get away with it, I would wear them just about anywhere!

Friday I also (literally) dusted off my sewing machine to do a burp cloth. This machine cost me about $99 on e-bay maybe 7 years ago? The bobbin part is taped on with packing tape b/c a piece broke off and it won’t stay shut! It does what I need it to do!

Here is the bib/burp cloth set I did and I sewed the pink ribbon on, hence me dusting off my machine. This is the AC Bird. The font on the bib is Empire from Embroidery Arts – this is a GREAT font! I have their Empire and Circle font and they stitch out almost better than some of my MWP fonts!

I have 6 new designs I was supposed to sew this weekend while Jeff was hitting the slopes in Deer Valley, UT! He’ll be back tomorrow and I’m just sitting down to do the FIRST one! Mallory came home Fri from school with a fever. We took a trip to the PED office Sat  morning and left with antibiotics and no real diagnosis (fever virus?). Sat & Sun she had fever pretty much constantly and we spent a lot of time on the couch snuggling!! I called the phone nurse this morning before my own Dr. appt. They called me back and I took her BACK in at 2:15. We left with a different antibiotic and a diagnosis this time of STREP! 🙁 Poor thing!! She went to bed at 5:00 today! The boys are in the tub and my goal is to get them in bed by 7!

While I was at the PED office today I saw a little boy with a dinosaur t-shirt on – it happened to be our AC dinosaur!! THEN, I saw the cutest little girl with a birthday hat t-shirt on – it was our AC birthday girl hat!! How cool to see our designs on t-shirts!! I would have taken pics but figured the moms might think that was creepy! I’ve also run in to 2 moms at Target Friday and Burger King today who are blog readers! Always fun to be “recognized”!! I think most of the time people recognize my kids, then realize I must be Rosemary!! Thanks for saying “Hey”!! I’m off to do a little work until The Bachelor gets far enough along I can watch it faster on TIVO!