Category — Gifts for Kids

I just finished this t-shirt for my nephew’s 3rd birthday, coming up in March. He loves all types of vehicles so I decided to use the truck pattern from my Sublime Stitching book by Jenny Hart. (The flame pattern is in there too.) This time I promised I would try a new stitch, something other than the back stitch. I used the split stitch on the body of the truck and it was so much effort and didn’t really look better than the back stitch, so I used the back stitch for the rest of the shirt. Maybe I’m just not adventurous enough, but the back stitch seems just about perfect for these t-shirts. Someday soon I’ll have to branch out though.

Paul says this is my best work yet. I was thinking it was sort of boring as I only did the basic back stitch. But I did manage to keep my stitches a consistent width, especially around the race car. I think it’s time to start expanding my stitch vocabulary. The perfect way to do this would be with a stitching group that could give me advice about what to use and when and how to mix it up to make the piece more interesting. Give me a shout if you know of such a group, online or in they NYC area.

Race car and flame patterns from Sublime Stitching by Jenny Hart.

For a boy, I was inspired by the alien in spaceship pattern by Jenny Hart in my Sublime Stitching book. I thought a little rocket on the side would be a cute addition too. Black makes the thread stand out really nice, but is very hard to work with. Getting the pattern from the iron on (black ink) onto the shirt was a challenge. The thing that ended up working best was the white transfer paper I bought from Sublime Stitching. I do worry that tracing the iron-on patterns may have ruined them for future ironing though. Only time will tell. I also used the t-shirt stabilizer from Sublime Stitching. I think this helped, but tearing it off at the end was very nerve-wracking. I ended up leaving some of it on the shirt because I didn’t want to hurt my stitches. I figure it will fall off on its own over time.

I just completed my first “real” embroidery project. An apron for my niece’s 7th birthday. I chose the butterfly pattern from my Sublime Stitching book by Jenny Hart because of all the cool colors it enabled me to use. I’m really pleased with how the butterfly turned out. However, I had wanted to do her name above the butterfly, but I just couldn’t get the pattern letters to iron on and couldn’t draw them on centered myself, so I went with the flowers instead. I like how the 2 color petals turned out in the flowers, I just made that up as I was doing it.