In the Hoop Embroidery

So I've gotten a little...um...bored with appliqueing shirts lately. Boy designs are just not as fun as cute girl designs and it's just gotten a little ho-hum. So a couple weeks ago I was sitting in church thinking about how fun it had been to make stockings for my Sunday School Class. I made them in-the-hoop which means that the machine stitches out a pattern and then you follow the directions included in the pattern to make the...thing you are making. Does that even make sense? Ha ha.

Here are a bunch of stockings I made for my mom for Christmas. She filled them with candy for her visiting teachees and gift cards for my aunt and cousin.

Basically it stitches out the outline of the stocking, you lay down your fabric, stitch out the name, lay another piece of fabric down, turn the whole thing inside out, and it magically turns into a stocking. I know, I don't understand it anyway.

ANYWAY I was thinking about how it would be fun to make my new class something fun for Easter, so I posted on an applique site that I was looking for a simple Easter design and someone said there was a site for in-the-hoop stuff only, so I went and joined that.

And my eyes were opened.

People were posting pictures of all sorts of amazing things they were making with their embroidery machines--dolls, stuffed animals, hair bows, toys, zipper pouches, baby bibs, etc, etc. It's awesome. 

One person had posted a lamb stuffie (that's what they call stuffed animals) design that was new and I was like, "Eeep! Have to have it!" So I immediately made two. I was exceedingly grateful that Logan napped a long time that day.

Aren't they CUTE??

Logan thought so too.

Here's girl lamby.

The next day I made an in-the-hoop paci strap. It was really easy but ended up a lot longer than I wanted it to be. I'm going to make one for my cousin's new baby girl and I'll shorten it a lot.

And then I discovered...the non-paper dolls. Oh my goodness, LOVE THEM. Go figure the day I got into this in the hoop stuff the girl designing them released the Frozen dresses and I just had to have them. They are too cute.

Then I had to get a few other outfits...and dolls...

I'm giving away a starter set of dolls on my Facebook Embroidery page so if you would like to try to win, please go see my page! Instructions are in the first post. You have until Saturday night to enter. 

Anyway, they are really fun and hopefully I'll be able to sell a few sets to offset the cost of my new hobby. Ha ha ha! I have a new stuffie design that I'm super excited about and will be *hopefully) showing off next week :)