Black Bobbin Thread

It’s always the little things, isn’t it? The simple act of changing the color of bobbin thread used on an embroidery project made all the difference in the world and gave a perfect end result. I am so excited about this little change that made such a huge difference in my last project.

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I wanted to put a simple black outlined design on my latest sewing project. I have used my machine to embroider red work a couple of times in the past. It has usually been a fight to get the tension just right so that the white bobbin thread is not pulled up into the design. I have even gone as far as to dab the white thread with a black sharpie pen to hide the white thread in the design before. For this design, I finally wised up and used black thread in the bobbin instead of white. This time when the bobbin thread pulled up into the design you could not see it. It blended in perfectly. The design came out rich and full and all in sharp black.

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Excited about these results, I had to try it again so I grabbed a bib towel from the closet and stitched another outline design and the results were once again rich and full.

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Now, why I did not think of using black bobbin thread years ago, I will never know. I have known since day one of embroidering that they make colored bobbin thread and that if your stitching a monogram on towels you can even use your top embroidery thread in the bobbin so the design looks stitched on both sides. But, it just never dawned on me until now to give it a try. I am so excited about the results that I plan to use a lot more black bobbin thread in the future. I am planning on using black bobbin thread on more than just outlined designs too. I plan to use it on all my dark designs and to even switch out bobbins on lighter colored projects when it is time to stitch the outline of the design.

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Stay tuned for the results.

Embellishing Baby Towel Bibs – Part 2

With the first appliqued Snoopy bib completed and the end result turning out fabulous, I quickly started to embellish another bib. This time for a little girl. And so with another piece of Snoopy fabric in hand, I got started.

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This time I wanted the back ground peace signs of the fabric to be part of the embellishment. Having already done a square, I decided to try a circle. I hunted around the sewing room and the kitchen for the perfect circle but I could not find the right size. I finally remembered the circle cutter I had purchased many years ago. This is one of those craft items that you use about once every 3 years, that you really shouldn’t have taking up space in your closet but are so happy you have when you need it. I quickly cut the size of circle I wanted with the circle cutter, and then traced and cut out my fabric. Next I needed to fold and press the edges over evenly.

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I decided there was no way I could free hand the folding of the edges and get anything that still resembled a circle. So, I pulled out the seam 2 seam. I cut a smaller circle of the seam 2 seam and applied it to the back of the applique circle. I then snipped the edge of the circle and started to fold the edge over sticking it to the seam 2 seam as I went.

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This worked out fabulously!

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My end result was an almost perfect circle. I then applied the circle to the bib, holding it in place with the seam 2 seam, and stitched around the edge. I wish I had matched my thread color better to the fabric, but the stitching was very simple so it worked out ok. I stitched around the circle twice for a fun look.

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At this point the embellishment was done, but I was really not pleased with my end result. It was just a big circle on a towel. Even though it was a Snoopy in a circle on a towel, it still needed something else.

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I returned to my sewing closet and stared, hoping for inspiration, when my eye drifted to the far back corner where my old fabric paints lived. I have not used these in years. I was afraid they would be all dried up, but with a little shaking, the paint began to flow again and then the fun started. I created several peace signs in different sizes and colors with the fabric paints and they looked great!

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Adding some pink ribbing around the neck was the final touch for this bib. The end results are so cute. I can’t wait to give it to some little girl.

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As I pulled the fabric paints from the closet, ribbon, lace and various trims fell to the floor. As I picked them up, my creative mind went crazy. Pink Disney princess ribbon with pink matching lace. Disney Cars ribbon with car tracks made from fabric paint. Rainbow Snoopy ribbon with many more Snoopy appliques. A whole new use for my leftover scraps from my other sewing projects. The possibilities became endless, and I became very excited about what to make next.

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I will definitely be making more baby bibs and embellishing them with and without my embroidery machine and maybe a combination of both. Let the fun begin!

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If you want to see my original baby bib post you can find it HERE.

And I hope you all had a great Summer of LOVE and PEACE!

Towel Baby Bibs – Neck Binding Tutorial

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Due to the popularity of my previous Towel Baby Bibs posts, I have recently received several questions regarding the baby bibs that I make for my friends and family.

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Because of this I am going to do a couple of new posts answering those questions and give a little more detail into the construction of the bibs so that people new to sewing will have less trouble figuring out how to make them. Then in the next few posts I will get creative and show you all the fun things you can do with the bibs once you have made them.

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This first post is a tutorial of how to apply the ribbing to the neck of the bibs. I am going to be using black ribbing with white thread. Hopefully, this will make it easier to see how to sew them together properly in the pictures. Just in case you didn’t know already you can click on any of the photos below to make them larger if you are having trouble seeing them.

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So here it is in just 10 easy steps:

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1. Cut the ribbing 10 1/2 inches by 3 inches. If the ribbing has a lot of stretch, cut it a little shorter. If the ribbing is not that stretchy, cut it a little longer.

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2. Place the circle pattern on the towel and cut the circle from the towel. I like to center the circle from side to side and place it about 1 inch from the top. You can place the circle anywhere you want but be careful not to place it too close to the top. Make sure  to leave enough room for your seam. I cut the circle out with my rotary blade so I don’t trace the circle first. If you are going to cut the circle out with scissors, it might make it easier to trace the circle onto the towel and then cut it out so you can pick the towel up. Plus, even though I have given the dimensions of my circle, you can be a little off from that, so don’t worry about the exact size too much. (I kept the circle I cut from the first bib that I made and serged around the edge, so I could use it as my pattern for bib making.)

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3. Fold the ribbing, right sides together, matching the width, and then sew the ribbing together.

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4. Fold the ribbing lengthwise, wrong sides together,  to form a ring.

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5. Pin the ribbing into fourths. Start by pinning the ribbing in half. To do this, I hold the seam in one hand, fold the ring flat and pin at the end of the piece. Then I place the seam and the first pin together and pin at each end.

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6. Pin the circle in the towel into fourths. I do this by folding the circle in half and pinning the sides of the circle. Then I fold the towel side to side, matching the pins, and pin the top and bottom of the circle.

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7. Matching pins, pin the ribbing to the towel. Make sure to put the seam to the top of the towel which is also the back of the circle.

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8. Stretch the ribbing and sew between the pins. Make sure to have the ribbing on top, this will make it easier to sew.

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9. Finish the edge. I use an overcast stitch in my sewing machine to finish the seam. I could use my serger but I like the cleaner look of the overcast stitch.

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10. Trim the edge next to the overcast stitches. Of course, it you serged the edge, the serger did this part for you.

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And now you have finished applying the ribbing to the neck of the bib and now it is complete!

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Congratulations on a job well done! This is what it should look like once completed.

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Stay tuned for my next posts on the fun part of embellishing the towel baby bibs.

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If you would like to see the ORIGINAL Baby Bib post you can find it HERE.

.Burda Design Baby Bibs

Towel Day

My husband is a huge Science Fiction fan and a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fan since the 80′s. There is this thing called Towel Day which was created to celebrate the Hitchhiker’s series where on May 25th you wear a towel around your neck all day. My husband has been wearing a ratty towel around with him every year on May 25th since 2001. This year I decided that I would make him a nice new custom made towel to wear around with custom Hitchhiker embroidery to go along with it. It turned out so nice I went ahead and made me one too! So if you see us wearing our towel’s on May 25th make sure and stop to say “Hello”. Just in case you have no idea what I talking about, here is some more info on Towel Day.

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A Primer on Towel Day From Wikipedia:

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Towel Day is celebrated every 25th of May as a tribute by fans of the late author Douglas Adams. On this day, fans carry a towel with them to demonstrate their love for the books and the author, as referenced in Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The commemoration was first held in 2001, two weeks after Adams’s death on 11 May 2001.

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The original quotation that referenced the greatness of towels is found in Chapter 3 of Adams’s work The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

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A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

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More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

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Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.” (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)

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— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

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So long Douglas, and thanks for all the fish!

BS

BS – Bibs and Sleepers.

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I ended up being able to do some creative stitching at the side seam and foot to save the original sleeper I mentioned in my previous post.

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Thank heavens for the small piece of fabric that you sew to the bottom of zipper. It became the extension that I needed for the crotch piece. As I sewed the other foot together, it was messed up too. So, the feet on this sleeper ended up being smaller than on some of the other sleepers I have made. I don’t think that anyone will notice though and it should not affect the wearing of the sleeper. I am pleased with the end results of this sleepers although it was a challenge to get there. The other sleeper sewed up great and was fun to make.

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They say it takes less time per sleeper to sew two sleepers at once. I don’t know if that is true. Yes, at first as you stitch the sleeves, you can sew and serge from one sleeper to the other without cutting off, but after that part comes the details. Zippers, ribbing, feet, seem to take the same amount of time whether you’re making one or two or more sleepers. So, in my opinion sewing two sleepers at once might end up saving 5 minutes or so. Oh well, I guess that is 5 minutes that can be used somewhere else.

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Of course, with all the embroidery supplies already out for the sleepers, I figured I might as well make some bibs for the babies too. I love to make bibs because it gives me the chance to stitch a usable sample of a design. The Mickey and Minnie design that I picked out ended up being so cute on the bib that I can’t wait to put it on a shirt for me.

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If you want to see my original baby bib post you can find it HERE.

Bibs and Blanks

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First lets start with the bibs. On May 17, a new nephew was born just in time for his older brother to turn 2. I had already sent a couple of sleepers for the new baby but decided that some new bibs might be needed too. I figured that the 2 year old could use them first. The bibs are so quick to make but are also so much fun to decided what to stitch on them. I knew that the 2 year old would be going to see Toy Story 3 with his older brothers, so I decided to put Buzz and Woody on his bibs. I really liked the Woody design but I was not as happy with the Buzz design. There is nothing wrong with the design. I just have others I like better. The third bib has a Donald Duck stitched on it because their mom is a big Donald Duck fan. So, naturally they all know who Donald Duck is.

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Now on to the blanks. We stopped by the Disney outlet store the last time we were in Las Vegas. They had these Disney sweater shirts for $3. They had the Disney tag in the the back but nothing else on them that indicated that they were from Disney. For $3, I could add my own Disney design to these shirts so I bought 3 of them. They only had size 3, so I only purchased enough for the nephews that are or will be a size 3 really soon. Upon getting them home, I realized why Disney did not put anything these shirts and they went to the outlet store. The shirts were made inside out. But, I still like the looks of the shirts and I already owned them so I figured I would go ahead with the embroidery and the kids could just use them to play outside this fall. I debated between Mickey Mouse or Pooh and Tigger on the shirts, but Mickey Mouse won out. I think that they turned out really cute.

Another nephew has taken a liking to outer space, planets and the space shuttle. So, while the hoop was still sticky from the sticky paper and the thread was all out, I decided to embroider him a space shuttle. I picked up this shirt awhile back at Wal-mart on clearance for $1. It was the perfect shirt with great colors for the the space shuttle to be stitched on!

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The last blank is the finished sleeper in the larger size. I debated quite a while about what design to put on the sleeper, puppies or pandas, but since it was going to the niece, it had to be a princess. The embroidery process was not as easy on the completed sleepers as it is when I embroider during the construction of the sleeper but it wasn’t much more difficult due to the size.

I embroidered one last design, but you won’t get to see it until I finish the sewing for that one. Stay tuned.

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If you want to see my original baby bib post you can find it HERE.

I’ve Finished…

I finally got a chance to do some sewing and did so with some success. I finished the baby sleepers and bibs which is a good thing because I have been invited to another baby shower for a colleague at work. And it’s good thing I found out that the new nephew’s mom does not like Pooh so I can give this sleeper away to someone else and make another one for him.

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The two sleepers sewed up with only minor difficulties, like matching the stripes, but as always were fun to sew and exciting to finish because they are always turn out so cute. Years ago, I found this Pooh and Piglet design on the internet somewhere. I have always wanted to stitch it on something, so I specifically
picked out the yellow fabric just for this design.

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I wasn’t  impressed with the design as it stitched out and I will not do it again. It looks very good on the top side but the back of it is a mess. I trimmed many threads and used some web knit over the design to hide and soften the back.

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But I am afraid the design will not withstand much washing and it will probably need to be ironed after each wash, which I feel is not acceptable for a baby sleeper. So, I am concerned about giving it away. Fortunately, the teddy bear design on the other sleeper stitched very well and is so cute on the stripes.

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On our last visit to see the parents, I raided Mom’s stash for brown ribbing and we found a small piece that I used on this sleeper. Now, neither one of us have brown ribbing left in our stashes. Oh well, I guess I will just have to go fabric shopping and buy some more ribbing.

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The bibs worked up easily and quickly and the results are so cute. I took the pictures before I washed the bibs so the top stabilizer is still over the designs.

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If you want to see my original baby bib post you can find it HERE.

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And in other good news, the husband was able to find me a great new source of fingertip towels for a great price and they are of excellent quality. So I am quite excited and I am back in the bib making business. I can now use the white tips towels from my new source or make my own if I want another color than white.

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P.S. I also got two new shirts cut out for the husband and so it was a very productive sewing day for me.

Improvising Tip Towels to Make Baby Bibs

When I pulled out my box that contained the fingertip towels for baby bibs, I found that I had less tip towels remaining than I remembered. As I dug though the box to get an inventory of what I really had left, I found at the bottom of the box some towels I had purchased for another project that never happened. They are bigger than tip towels, about the size a large hand towel.

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As I laid a tip towel on them to see just how big they really were in comparison, I found that width wise they were exactly two tip towels wide. So, by cutting the towel in half, I would have two tip towels to use as bibs. This would have been perfect except for the decorative stripe on the ends of the towels that would then be on the left or right of the bibs once they were cut to size. I decided to give it a try anyway and see how the bibs turned out.

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I measured the towel into fourths and luckily on the 1/4 and 3/4 mark I had room to put a 4 X 4 embroidery design before the stripe got in the way. After embroidering the two designs, I cut the towel at the 1/2 mark, serged the edges, turned and stitched down, finishing the raw edge. I then measured for the neck. To center the neck, I had to cut into the stripe. I thought about moving the neck off center so the stripe was not involved, but I did not like that look. It was too far off.

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I decided to go ahead at cut into the stripe for the neck and just see how it turned out, and as you can see, it turned out just fine. In fact, I think that the bibs turned out pretty well on the half towel. The back side is not nearly as pretty as the bibs made with the tip towels, but the front look is all I really care about and I believe the functionality will still be the same, if not better. These are pretty nice towels and are thicker than most I use. Some of the tip towels I have used previously have been pretty thin.

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Finding ribbing I liked with the green towel was a chore. I did not have any matching green so I tried to match with the embroidery designs colors. Snoopy was easy of course. I chose the red ribbing, but white would have worked as well. The dinosaur design was a little more difficult to pick a color. I  had no brown ribbing so I dug deep into the back of the closet for find this manufactured ribbing I had bought many years ago and never used. It matched well, but it definitely made the bib more masculine.

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The 3rd bib I made is from a tip towel from the box. I wanted to use the cream towel with this design. I wanted to put brown ribbing on the neck, but as I already mentioned, I had no brown ribbing. (I know what I will be buying on my next trip to a real fabric store since Wal-mart does not have ribbing.) I tried pink ribbing but just did not like the look, so I settled for the cream ribbing, even though it is not my favorite. I think the bib turned out cute anyway.

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I am excited now to make more bibs and will not hesitate so much in making them do to my lack of tip towels since I think the hand towels cut in half work out just fine.

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(NOTE: I’ve added a  small update to this post HERE. And the ORIGINAL post is HERE)

Towel Baby Bibs

HEY! Hello visitors from Vanilla Joy! Thanks for visiting. If you have any problems or questions with this pattern I have created a new post with simplified step by step instructions so you might want to check it out too! It is available HERE.

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Someone asked me the other day for the pattern for the towel bibs that I make

and I thought it might make a good blog post.

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The biggest challenge to make these bibs is finding the fingertip towels. I just call them ‘Tip Towels’ for short. Years ago, Wal-mart sold them in 5 packs. When they stopped carrying them and put them on clearance, I was lucky enough to get a good supply, so I haven’t done any shopping for them since then. I can tell you that the tip towels that I use are the same size that golfers use for golf bag towels. If you are unable to locate the size that you want, you might try a sporting goods store, but I have noticed that a lot of the golf towels have a grommet in one corner so you might not want those. I have made the bibs with bigger towels for bigger kids, just make the neck part bigger. I could always cut a towel to the size I wanted and hem the edges, but that is more work.

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As far as the construction goes, they are simple to make.

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1. Cut a piece of ribbing 10 1/2 inches by 3 inches, sewing it into a neck band, and pin into fourths.

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2. Place the circle pattern on the towel in the center and a couple for inches from the top.

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3. Trace around the circle, cut the circle out and pin into fourths.

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4. Pin neck band to towel and stitch. Finish the edge however, serge, zig-zag, so on.

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Now the fun starts. Add some ribbon or lace for a little girl, or an applique or iron-on for a little boy. Go crazy designing the bib and have a good time. Remember though to make the embellishments washable.

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If you try them please let me know how the bibs turn out for you here in the comments.

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(NOTE: I’ve added a follow up to this post HERE and another small update is HERE.)

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