Family Sillouette Seiries

For our latest sewing bee project we were asked to create something that we could hang on the wall and admire. And lately, I’ve really been into the whole heritage/legacy thing and I saw this idea of fabric silhouettes in a book.

I made Hubby’s first because he’s bald and I figured he would be easiest (love you, Baby). When I showed it to him, I asked if he would like any words printed on his. He immediately decided upon “Papa Bear.” And thus the series was born.

Turns out this whole thing was freaky-simple. All I had to do was:

1) Take a profile picture of my subject
2) Blow up the picture on the computer screen to desired size
3) Trace out silhouette on tracing paper
4) Cut out the shape
5) Trace around cut out onto desired fabric (If you are using a light quilting fabric you might want to consider a stabilizer, but that’s optional)
6) Cut out shape
7) Adhere to background fabric (Again, you might want to consider a stabilizer for the background)
8) Stitch into place
9) Stamp on words (optional, I used just regular stamp ink, like for paper)
10) Cut out background fabric to fit your frame

See? Ten easy steps. Each project took maybe 45 minutes. And it was totally worth it. Now I smile every time I look up at the wall. And I know these are going to hang in our home for a long time.

Sweet Tree Pillow

This is another sewing group project, but I thought I would use it as a warm up for the family tree project I'm working up. And it turned out specatularly well... if I do say so myself.

This whole thing was finished in about 2 hours.

I used a natural colored linen blend fabric for the pillow. The purple tree that you see is actually a pieced-together stamp that I made. Then I used some fabric paint to stamp it on, piece by piece. First the trunk, then main branches, then smaller branches. Next I cut out the leaves out of some leftover scraps and sewed them on with a criss-cross stitch. After that, just sew the pillow pieces together, stuff it, seal it, and Voila! Tree pillow.

Soon, I'm going to make a much bigger version of this to hang on the wall where the leaves will have our ancestor’s names going back 5 generations. Should be pretty bitchin.