Embroider-iffic!

For our anniversary, Jordan bought me such a fun new toy--an embroidery machine! 

One of my friends had gotten one and was posting lots of pictures of what she'd done with it on Facebook, so I'd started looking at one. I was trying to figure out if it was worth selling the rest of my Breyer horses to pay for half of it (these things are dang expensive, and mine is one of the cheapest ones) when Jordan was like, "Well, let's just buy it for you, and maybe you can sell stuff to make up some of the cost." Jordan is big into entrepreneurship.

Anyway, it got here on Saturday, along with 63 colors of embroidery thread, 144 prewound bobbins, and a bunch of stabilizer. You need a lot of stuff for embroidery. Saturday was a really bad time for it to come, because General Conference was on and I wanted to play with my new toy. It was like Christmas on Sunday, except that they always only do an hour of church on Christmas Sunday and Conference is FOUR HOURS. So I maybe got a little bit distracted. A little.

Don't worry, I'll read the talks later.

ANYWAY, away from how I'm a bad person. Within about forty minutes of opening my box, I whipped out this bad boy:

Okay, it's not on anything, but it's still really cool!

Then I put this on one of Logan's hospital blankets:

Jordan took this picture and said, "And now our baby is going to be totally ignored." Ha ha ha!

Anyway. I really got the machine because I wanted to do appliques. Appliques are really "in" here and they are SO FREAKING CUTE! On Monday one of my favorite sites put all their appliques on sale for 80 cents each so I bought a bunch of designs. So fun!

This is a burp cloth and my first appliqued item.

I made this turkey, which is a more complicated applique.

But there is certainly a learning curve. I attempted to put an Australian Shepherd on a burp cloth and totally FAILED. I ended up stitching the top of the burp cloth to the back of the stabalizer. I had to cut it to get it off the hoop! Ha ha ha.

Oh, and when I tried to make my very first oneside with applique last night, I did EVERYTHING wrong. First, I forgot to push the design all the way to the top of the shirt, so it ended up in the middle/bottom. Then I forgot to pin the sleeves (it was a long-sleeved onesie) in front of the shirt so they wouldn't get caught, so I stitched the sleeve to the back of the onesie and had to cut it off. And I did something else wrong but I can't think of what it was right now.

However, on my second onesie I think I did a really good job! I love how it turned out.

I decided when I need to make a girlie shirt, I will just make them for my nieces, so I started with the youngest one.

I'm going to start an etsy shop and make shirts to sell. I don't know how it'll go and I'm really nervous about it, but I already have one order! Wish me luck!