Skulls and Cherries

I found Sublime Stitching back in 2005 while planning my wedding. I had these grandiose plans of making cutey t-shirts for the bridesmaids and maybe some hankies and all sorts of other things. I bought the starter kit (that is no longer available) that came with your choice of 4 patterns, some floss, needle, scissors and the loop (that's all I can remember).  I bought t-shirts and more floss. I'm telling you I had BIG plans. Well anyone who has planned their own, mainly DIY wedding knows that it is very time consuming to say the least, so needless to say things like  BM cards, invites, menus programs etc. took up most of my time and embroidery took a back burner. Fast forward to this year and my sister squeezes out a little and suddenly I thought to myself, "this little needs some awesome hip clothing that is NOT pink and just like everyone else!" She needs skulls and retro cherries and one of a kind onsies just for her. 

So I blew the dust off the old embroidery kit and decided to test my awesome skills that up until this point really only existed in my head. But thanks to Jenny at Sublime Stitching and her "This ain't your gramma's embroidery!™" I had no doubt I could do this. So with that said, here are the very first things I ever embroidered. Actually as of today the only things I've embroidered but I have a bag of like 5 other onsies and some other randomness that I need to get a move on because the little is getting BIG and its getting colder so she needs some spiffy long sleeve items to wear around the playground.

Who says skulls aren't baby friendly?

This skully is from Tattoo Your Towels with a slight alteration so that it didn't look too boyish. Instead of the skull crack I had the Mister draw a bow for me so that skully was more girly. 

In hindsight I should have had him draw the bow before I put the material on the loop and started embroidering but it was my first time. All in all I think it turned out pretty good. 

I decided to skip the lettering this time around because after a few stitches I realized that lettering will take a bit more practice and the skully looked pretty cool alone. I used a split stitch for the whole thing. Little O liked it too. 

After the skully project I decided to try a different material since the onsie was too stretchy. Plus it was getting warm and I thought the little should wear a dress. Since I knew this was going to be a new creative outlet I felt the need to buy a few more gadgets to make embroidery life easier (plus I just love gadgets). I ordered a Q-Snap and t-shirt stabilizer, which will definitely come in handy when I do the next onsie because it will keep it from stretching in the loop. The t-shirt stabilizer is also ideal for transferring the pattern onto dark material.

Who likes Cherries? 

When using the t-shirt stabilizer on dark fabric you actually have to leave the stabilizer on and stitch over it then gently tear it out after. The directions say to cut the stabilizer so that you can put the hoop over the stabilizer but I felt that doing that was wasting precious materials so I chose to cut the stabilizer to the size of the pattern and just leave it pinned while stitching and it worked out just fine. 

For the cherries I started with a split stitch to outline then went over with a satin stitch (like she shows on the 2nd balloon). Split stitch for the leaves and then a back stitch for the 3 little lines in the middle of the leaves.

Note to self and anyone else reading. When the directions say to not get the stabilizer wet, DON'T get it wet! It ends up sticking to the material and it took some effort to get that little spec off, but all in all it turned out pretty cute and the little loved it.