I had the pleasure of attending a baby shower today for our friends who run the delightful and delectable Teacake Bake Shop, which sells the most sinful yet delicious sweet treats online and in their three retail shops around the Bay Area.

For gifts, we wanted to pick stuff from their baby registry but also include something with a personal touch, so one of the items we chose was the Bumkins 3-Pack Organic Cotton Everyday Bibs. Since they were blank, they were the perfect canvas to turn from this:

into this!

The cupcake and cookie applique shapes were no-brainers because of the business they’re in and in fact, I took them straight off of one of their email newsletters! I figured that wasn’t a total copyright infringement since I would soon be handing over ownership to them anyway. =P And the “a” is the baby’s first initial.

I have to thank Elizabeth for her Sew,Mama,Sew! tutorial on Simple Machine Applique, from which I used the tip to fuse my applique onto the bib with Heat ‘n Bond Lite Iron-On Adhesive to stabilize the applique as well as help hold it in place. I had a little bit of trouble getting the felt to fully adhere to the terrycloth, but I got enough of a hold to keep things mostly in place.

For the felt, I chose Ecospun Felt which is both machine washable and made from 100% post-consumer recycled plastic bottles — a perfect pairing with the organic cotton of the bibs! A couple of sources for Ecospun Felt are Felt-o-rama and Hart’s Fabric. I love me some 100% wool felt but it doesn’t wash as well and I figure well, this is a bib I’m working with here soooo…

I used a straight stitch for the cupcake and cookie, and a zig zag stitch for the heart and initial. I found the zig zag stitch easier to maneuver around curves. The little chocolate chip circles in the cookie and the lettering below it were done using my Janome 4900QC’s pre-programmed stitches.

Here are a few closer-up shots!

I used ivory colored bobbin thread so there’d be less of a thread mess on the back of the bibs. It worked out pretty well! You can see some of the colored top thread from the underside since I loosened the tension of the top thread (to 3), but overall it came out pretty clean so that was good.

Mama and papa seemed happy with the bibs, so I was a happy camper. Hooray!

Similar Posts:

• Elephants, dolphins and V-Day. Oh my!

Popularity: 2% [?]