What do you get the person who has everything they want for Christmas?
That is the question my mother faces each year as she hunts for Christmas presents for her kids. Every year we tell her not to get us anything and we will still love her, but she insists on giving something. So, in trying to help my mom think of gift ideas for my sister and her husband, my sister suggested that Mom make them new fleece jackets. Mom thought this was a great idea and I volunteered to add some finishing touches to them once they were done. On my Mom’s last visit to see my sister, they picked out the fleece, then Mom got busy sewing and then mailed me the jackets. That is when the fun began for me!
I wish I had been with Mom and my sister when they picked the color for sister’s husband’s jacket. It was decided long ago that Mickey Mouse would go on his jacket. My plan was to put just a plain Mickey Mouse on the back of the jacket, but when I saw the color of the jacket and knowing that 60% of Mickey is black, I figured when I got done with the embroidering all you were going to see was a pink face, red pants and gold shoes. I searched my designs for a Mickey with more color, but did not find one I liked. I have several designs of Mickey with Donald Duck or Pluto, but they would not work either. Finally, after explaining the problem to my husband, he came up with the idea of framing Mickey. You would definatly be able to see a big yellow dot on the dark gray jacket. So, I chose a classic Mickey instead of a current Mickey design so he would have a white face. I also really dig the front and back designs of Mickey especially with the surprised look on Mickey’s face. With the aid of my husband’s digitizing skills, the designs for the Mickey jacket were ready to stitch. The Snoopy designs were far easier to pick. I knew I wanted the whole gang on the back. With the new Dakota designs, it was easy to pick just the right one. I also knew that I wanted just a plan basic Snoopy on the front so that was an easy pick too.
Next the stitching started. I had to hoop the jackets with a top stabilizer due to the fleece being so fuzzy, but my regular water soluble stabilizer is cut the for a 4 inch hoop, so I had to use a package of Ultra Solvy (extremely stable, as the package said) that I had picked up. I have never worked with this heavy of a stabilizer, top or bottom before and this made hooping interesting. By the time I had a bottom stabilizer, fleece jacket, and heavy top stabilizer, I could hardly get the hoop to snap together. Once again though, with my husband’s help, I got the jackets hooped and moved on. The stitching went pretty smoothly. I took my time because I wanted the jackets to turn out well. It was a lot of fun stitching the jackets, but they took a long, long time to stitch. It was about 5 hours for the hooping and stitching front and back for both jackets. After the 3rd bobbin on the back Mickey design, I knew a lot of stitches had been sewn. I thought the heavy top stabilizer would give me grief while stitching, but it did a good job at stabilizing and I am glad that I used it. It held in there with all those needle punches. The problem with the heavy top stabilizer came after the sewing at removal time. When I use my light web top stabilizer, I can pull most of it off and then use a small amount of water of dissolve the edges. Using this Ultra Solvy I cut as much of it away as I could, then soaked the jackets in cold water, rinsed them and sent them to the washing machine. I really did not want to wash my sister’s Christmas present just in case anything happened in the washing and drying cycle, but I had little choice with the Ultra Solvy. Luckily though they make it through just fine and polar fleece really does not shrink.
I am happy with the end result on both jackets. Mom did a great job with sewing them and I like the designs that I put on the jackets. I shipped the jackets to my sister in a box marked “Don’t open until Christmas”. I am excited for my sister to see the end results, but I refrained from posting this until I was sure she had opened the package since I did not want to spoil any Christmas surprises. She gets to open it early because they are going out of town to see the their latest grandson. One more little nephew to sew for! I am jealous though that my sister is getting the Snoopy jacket. I wanted it after it was finished and turned out so well! Oh well, maybe next year I will have Mom make a new fleece jacket for me!
I bought a couple of towels at Walmart and sewed them together. Next, I filled the towel bag with rice and leveled it out on my cutting table. I then divided the rice in the bag with a sawing motion of the yard stick and lifted the bag at the crease. The rice ran to the far end of each side of the bag. So far so good. With that I went to the sewing machine and that is when the troubles began. When I laid the bag down to sew the seam, the rice of course ran back to the center seam. I pushed it out of the way as I sewed but had a hard time keeping every thing straight so ended up with a crooked seam. I thought about unpicking this seam but decided this was my first try and so did not unpick it. I went back to the cutting table, leveled the rice out in the bag and used the yard stick again to make the next seam. This seam was even harder to sew because the rice was even closer to the seam, and once again I sewed a very crooked seam. I kept going this way and fighting the rice until the second to the last seam where there was no longer any room to move the rice out of the way. That is went the needle breaking started. I broke 3 needles on that seam. Dry rice is pretty hard and when the needle would hit it they just snapped in two. On the last seam, I broke 2 more needles and called it quits. Actually, I threw the rice bag on the floor and started to yell at it. I decided I was not supposed to make a rice bag even if it sounded so easy, and even if the neighbor kid had made several as a school project. 
After I calmed down and I looked at the rice bag on the floor, I decided I would not be beaten by a silly rice bag. My first problem was that I had too much rice in the bag. My second problem was that I needed a better way to control the rice during sewing. So, with that I grabbed another towel and went to work. This time I started by sewing vertical columns in the towel. Then through trial and error I found that 1/3 cup of rice in each column filled a 4″ square nicely. After adding 1/3 cup to each column, I returned to the sewing machine and sewed a seam across the columns. This worked so much better. I had solved my two problems. I was dealing with less rice at a time, giving me more control over the rice. After sewing the seam, I filled each remaining column with another 1/3 cup of rice and then sewed a seam across the columns again. I continued this until the top column. And thus had completed a nice evenly sewed rice bag. So, I guess my friend will get a rice bag for Christmas this year after all! Which is a good thing ’cause I think the only thing Santa was bringing her was Coal!
good at staying out of the stores and buying more meaningless crap to fill my house with, but that did not stop the merchandisers from getting me to spend some money. With the holiday season upon us, I am receiving extra e-mails from Joann’s Fabric and Hancock Fabric. I have been resisting the great deals until the day Hancock Fabric offered 50% off of licensed print fleece. Hancock has had these Snoopy prints for a long time, but not at a price I was willing to purchase it for. But with this sale, the time was right to buy and I was in a buying mood. I found a coupon for $10 off and free shipping with a minimum purchase and that cinched the deal. Yes, I do remember a blog entry here a few months back that said no more fabric for one year, but if one remembers correctly that vow did not include Snoopy fabric, plus I have cracked (ok – broken) that vow a few times. Deciding to buy the fabric was the easy part. Now I have to find a place to store it and decided what I want to make from it. The dot piece will probably become blanket for nieces and nephews, and I have about decided to make me a jacket out of the comic strip winter one. At the moment I have no plans for the 3rd piece but I bought enough to make just about whatever I decide to make in the future. Isn’t buying fabric fun?
embroidering the 4 shirts and even tried an applique on two of them, something I had never done before. I learned a lot about embroidering appliques and my technique and results improved greatly on the second try. I learned that one trick to appliqueing is a sharp pair of scissors that will cut very close to that first seam, and because I was working with a fuzzy fabric, to trim some of the fuzz where the satin stitch will stitch and remove any extra fuzzes. 
