It's a Strat, not a Tele

The birthday shirts have paved the way into more applique. While I made Little Bird's birthday shirt out of a plain white Carter's onesie, Pippi's mom picked out a cute white t-shirt from Old Navy for her birthday shirt. That inspired me.

I have bought a few t-shirts from Old Navy like the one shown here. I also picked up a color blocked tee from Target.

After collecting some solid Kona cottons, I started trying to decide what to put on the shirts. I was a little disappointed in how the color of the Kona changed once the Heat 'n' Bond was applied. The orange was a bright, sunny orange before, but once on the shirt, it had more of a rusty hue.

Of course, there had to be a guitar. I'm hoping to create a good silloutte of a jazz archtop in honor of Kevin, but for now, we have a Stratocaster. What I can't decide is if it needs detail. If I do humbuckers, then I'll feel like I should do strings. Strings would lead to tuning pegs and then it would look funny with no knobs. So I think I'm leaving it as is. Although I'm open for suggetions.

I used a decorative stitch around the edges. I'm not sure that I like it very much. The traditional applique stitch that I've seen? I don't think my machine does it. At least I haven't found it yet.

There are three shirts left to do. I'm planning a robot, another guitar, and a dog.

First Birthday Party

Even though I thought that the whole of my craftiness lay in sewing, my friend Boo has proclaimed otherwise. She is due with her first child next month (we are holding out for me and LL sharing a birthday on Fat Tuesday!), and I have assured her that the maternal hormones are where craftiness lies dormant until you become pregnant.

Boo said to me this past Saturday at Little Bird's first birthday party, "You are so crafty!" I blushed, and wondered if it were true. Maybe, but I have to acknowledge much help and inspiration from my 12 year old stepdaugher, Mallory. CC's party would not have been possible without her assistance last week.

The party started with a dog theme. We made the invitations with some Microsoft clip art and Publisher. However, we did this on my desktop, and I cannot figure out how to get it onto my HP Mini. Of course, I could get up and go into the other room, but the invitations weren't inspiring enough to warrant actual physical movement.

Mallory and I made these cookies for party favors. The instructions came in the February issue of Parents as an idea for Valentine's Day. We thought they would be perfect for a doggie birthday party.

We looked for a cake pan that was shaped like a dog bone, but couldn't find one. I was alright with that because in reality I didn't want to spend the money on it. However, I am so not a cake decorator, it's not even funny. I can't write on a cake at all. It's horrible. We decided that we would make a puppy paw cake, and even though I had to tell several people what it was supposed to be, I was still please with it.

I also made little puppy ears out of some of the miles of felt I have leftover from our Christmas stockings (don't even get me started about how wrong I was about how much felt I would need for that project. It's embarrassing). We bought children's elastic headbands and sewed the ears onto them. Here are a few of the fabulous models:

And just because I am so pleased with how it turned out, here's one more shot of the birthday boy in his birthday shirt: