Don’t Try This at Home Kids!

Posted by on July 27, 2011

 Yesterday I had to monogram a HUGE cooler bag for a friend. For the first time ever, I see why a real 6 needle machine stand comes in handy! The bulky bag was too much and too wide and too stiff to go in between the machine sitting on a table. Solution: I need the machine to straddle on 2 tables so there is space underneath. I don’t recommend this and we moved it back to the table right after I did the bag, but it worked!

As you can see the excess of the bag is hanging in between the 2 tables. It was a wide bag, and very stiff. Most bags are flexible and you can cram them in between the machine on a table.

At this point I was praying and crossing my fingers and toes! It’s always scary doing a big bag such as this (and especially after my luck with the bunk pouches recently. It turned out great, and unfortunately I didn’t take a picture of the end result! I did a big lime green “G” on this pocket!

While I was doing the bag, Sissy was doing this…

She has rearranged all of my thread 8 times, and likes to pick out what colors are “hers” (i.e.: usually all the PINKS).

I have 3 thread stands now and hopefully next week they’ll be up on the wall (and out of reach!). I have the perfect place for them and pegboard, so I can also hang my big 5000M spools. I looked at pegboard today at Lowe’s and it was $16 for huge sheet. I can’t decide if I want to go that route, or buy a 3 pack of square pegboard from Michael’s!

Here is a picture of the bulletin board after we hung it! My desk is still a mess (and notice the McD Frappe).

Right now I’m monogramming fabric-covered-in-vinyl Buckhead Betties lunchboxes & backpacks. Another one of those projects where I hold my breath and pray that nothing messes up! I will try to remember to take pictures of them! I’m doing a name, and then a mini design also so the twins who they belong to can tell them apart!

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R-a-n-d-o-m…

Posted by on June 7, 2011

This post is a bunch of different photos over the past week or so! First and foremost, I finally got up the nerve last week to unpack my cap frame/hoop and give it a whirl. I’ve had a couple of visors WAITING for this moment for like a year now. Does this look like medical equipment, or is it just me? It’s really not as hard as I anticipated and I did 1 visor and ordered 20 more to do for my patient friend (patient as in patiently waited for me to tackle this for the past year, not patient as in this IS medical equipment).

If you click HERE, on Sewingmachine.com’s Facebook page, they have a great video on doing hats on the (Brother) PR machine. If my link doesn’t work go to their Facebook page and click on Video on the left sidebar and you’ll see it. I have some improving and fine tuning to do, but it came out pretty good for my first try! I also monogrammed his web address on one side. These visors are for our good friend and Realtor John Coley at Lake Martin Voice Realty!

Speaking of the LAKE, last weekend we went up to Lake Martin for a couple of days to hang out and celebrate Browder’s 8th birthday. We rode over to Windemere to see some tornado damage from the April tornadoes that hit Alabama. It was an amazing site! You could see the path of the tornado as clear as day!

Here were B’s birthday cupcakes (sorry the pics are out of order) and they were decorated by the kids themselves! Looks like 1 is missing… Jeff??

Sis in her stylish $1 flower sunglasses from Target! Sorry again, pics out of order…

Back to tornado damage… we saw homes that were pretty much gone and some were wiped out completely with nothing left but a slab! We saw part of a kitchen with items still in the cabinets while the rest of the house was GONE! We saw “stuff” such as clothes and mattresses hanging in trees, as well as a wreath hanging on a tree where 2 ladies (on another part of the lake) were killed by the tornado. So sad!!

Here is one that is GONE! Not sure if they have cleaned it up that quickly or if it was wiped off the slab.

If you’re on Facebook you may have seen where we’ve been collecting embroidery items for Laughin’ Lizard Embroidery. Michele lost her home in the April tornadoes in Eclectic, AL which is near the Lake. Her machine was saved but a lot of her fabric and supplies were damaged. I met Michelle one day last week and gave her 4 or 5 boxes of stuff people had sent, as well as a bag of stuff I cleaned out myself. So far this week I’ve received 2 more packages with several more on the way! If you have extra embroidery supplies, fabric, etc. that you’d like to donate to her, please email me at rosemarygulledge@appliquecafe.com! Michele is in temporary housing right now with plans to rebuild, so that’s why I’ve been collecting and delivering to her! She works in Montgomery where I live so we met on her lunch hour for “the exchange”!!

More randomness…

Here is a shirt I did last week ~ the AC Flower Purse (minus the flower). My friend bought an extra pair of shorts so I could use the fabric for the applique. These are from Belk ~ love J. Khaki stuff!

I also did Virginia’s Cross on this tee to match the skirt. We have sold 81 Virginia’s Cross designs thus far, and all proceeds will be donated to Virginia’s Run. Applique Cafe will also match whatever is sold! I love this design and it would also be pretty with muted colors ~ ivory, khaki, tan, etc.

I got a new feature on my website! Now the Facebook, Blog & Twitter links are all in one place. While adding this I finally noticed that Your Cart was also a feature on my site! Yes, I had never noticed this before!!!!!!

LASTLY….. I will be at TJ’s Fabrics in Opp, AL on Saturday, June 18th (a week from this Saturday) from 10AM – 1PM! I’m so excited to be IN a fabulous fabric store for 3 hours, and I look forward to everyone coming by! It’s on the way to the beach, so just make a trip out of it!! 🙂 TJ’s is also on Facebook!

One more thing… I mentioned before that we bought a house! We’re so excited and are scheduled to close next week. Throw in a little family vacation and we’ll be moving (again) at the end of the month! This will be our last move for a long long long time! Lots of work ahead, so I am SERIOUSLY not taking any more customer orders until we get settled. I still have like 4 shirts and 6 graduation gifts to do and that’ll be it for a while. Oh yeah, and maybe the visors when they come in. Stay tuned!! I’m so excited to have a SEWING ROOM with a DOOR that CLOSES!!! NO MORE DINING ROOM!!

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411 on Flower Sunglasses

Posted by on May 10, 2011

Here is a random post… This is one of those situations where I took some pictures while doing a design the other day and one thought led to the next on a possible blog post. THIS (below) is a preview of a new design. I usually post it on Facebook as soon as we finish it for several reasons ~ to get feedback, to produce a little excitement about an upcoming design and basically just to get the design out there. There are so many digitizers now that we like to throw our designs out there early because you never know when another digitizer is going to post the same design (not on purpose!!). We all get suggestions from the same customers and we also may all look at the same clipart sites. We try to avoid clipart for that reason but sometimes they have such cute ideas that we can’t resist!! Anyway, this one was an original idea we came up with. I try to check a hand full of websites when we come up with an idea to be sure they don’t have the design. We like to do what no one else is doing (whenever possible)! BTW this design is now available ~ Flower Sunglasses.

For you beginners out there, below is a THREAD CHART! It comes as a .JPG file with each design (and is included in the zip file you receive upon checkout). I, personally, determine my own thread colors, so I totally ignore the thread colors on the chart. Basically when we digitize a design, we have to assign different colors for each step so that your machine will know it’s a different color and will know to STOP! On our thread charts you will see a little image of each step in order and then the final product below. From time to time people email me who are contemplating an embroidery machine and I usually send them a few of these so they can see how an applique is broken down!

Here I just broke the steps down a little more…

For this particular design you could either layer the inside of the glasses fabric ON TOP of the frame (lime polka dot) fabric, OR…. I trim that fabric away so that the 2nd fabric is on the white shirt and not the brightly colored lime polka dot fabric. This is right after step 2 (tackdown) and I pierce through the fabric with my (dull) scissors at an angle, and then trim away inside the sunglasses.

If you didn’t want another fabric inside, you could stop here and skip to the satin steps (5 & 6). I chose orange gingham for the inside of my sunglasses (because I’m obsessed with orange).

This is after step 4 – I’ve tacked down my gingham fabric and trimmed the excess away!

I did another post a while back on LAYERING FABRICS in an APPLIQUE. This is another example of that! Here below is the finished product. I used a layer of WHITE FLANNEL underneath my hot pink dot fabric. Step 8 is a redwork (thick) tackdown stitch b/c this portion of the design (flowers) is RAGGY. Step 9 is the orange in the center of the flower which is just thread. See HELPFUL POSTS on my blog for 2 posts about raggy designs! Sorry I did not take pictures of each step as I was mainly trying to capture the layering fabrics.

As of NOW, we have sold 127 AWARENESS RIBBON designs!!!! Applique Cafe is matching our first check, so $254.00 will go to Tornado Relief in the next day or so! We got several suggestions on Facebook as to where to send this first check and will let everyone know where it is going when we have a minute to sit down and get it together! Thanks to all of you who purchased it and I hope you put it to good use, whether it be for tornado victims or breast cancer or whatever!

Filed Under: Applique Cafe, Design, How To | Tagged:
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