Crafty McCrafterson....

Ok, so I think I'm gonna take this blog in a crafting direction. I love to craft, and at any given moment I have at least a dozen projects I'm working on (mostly in my mind, very little am I actually doing any real work on, but you get the point.) Anyway, this week I decided to try my hand at some sewing and make a couple of outfits for an adorable little bundle of joy.

Throughout this process, I learned 2 things:
1) Appliqued Onsies are the sweetest, cutest, easiest, most inexpensive way to give someone a personalized baby gift they are sure to love.
And
2) Sewing, is the devils craft. Now don't get me wrong, I have plenty of friends that love to sew, but it is NOT for me. I hate it, and yes I know that hate is a strong word, but I do. I think it goes back to my preschool days, see, my mom was so concerned for my safety (IE: she was well aware of what a klutz I was) and so while all my peers were learning how to use scissors, I was forced to color or do other things without blunt edges. My scissor deficiency has now become a big joke in our family and I use it on a regular basis to make my mom feel guilty for ruining my life :)

Now, I believe my lack of scissor skills leads to my hatred of sewing. I mean cutting out the patterns, COME ON, I'd have better luck with a skill saw, seriously. But then once you get it cut out, its man vs. machine, and 9 times out of 10 the machine wins. UGH

But don't let this rant fool you, I will continue to use sewing in my crafting, I'll just have to have my mom help me with those parts. Kinda like she did in home-ec, when she did all my sewing projects while I was busy trying to force my teacher into early retirement. She loves to sew, which is great because that gene skipped a generation.

So, here's what I did:
Buy some plain onsies (my store only had white but I would've LOVED to try some colored ones)
Buy some pants that match the fabric you plan to applique. Now, there is an IMPORTANT note you should make here. If you take the fabric with you to the store to match some pants, be SURE you let someone know you are bringing it in. If you don't, you will be flagged for shoplifting and stopped by the "Dept of Homeland Security" on your way out of Walmart. Don't laugh, I'm dead serious. I know you always think it won't happen to you, but it WILL, I've seen it 100 times...

Then, decide what kind of appliques you want to design. In my case I went with a tie (I'm a sucker for a man in a tie) and an L with a crown for the little prince I was giving it to. I decided to embellish the crown with some cute little buttons.

You'll want to sew some stitch witchery (further proof that sewing is of the devil, stitch witchery...seriously?) on the fabric you plan to use for the appliques and then cut out your design. You'll then iron it on to the onsie and use a zig zag stitch to outline it.

In the end, you get this, and I was quite happy with the result...





















Stay tuned for my next project which will include reinventing this old door: