Going Polka Dotty

At long last - I'm able to post the most amazing refashion!  I've been teaching Son #1's girlfriend how to sew, but I certainly don't have to teach her how to think or be creative - she has such a wealth of fresh ideas and can see so much potential in the most common garment - and even though her sewing skills are still in development, she has no fear of reaching her goal.  Such an awesome student to have!

We went to the Assistance League, where I have been getting most of my garments to refashion myself - she was so intrigued with all the bits and pieces I've brought home, that she requested that I take her on a trip to see the place for herself.  It was so worth it when she spotted this maternity skirt - her eyes just lit up and I could almost hear the gears turning!

Silly me, I didn't take a photo of the skirt all in one piece (she was so eager to get started, I swear as soon as we hit the house the scissors started flying) but here it is right before it got really chopped up:

She wanted the skirt of the dress to retain that cute flippy look ,
with the underskirt intact.  We sewed the bottom part together
where we cut it from the original skirt so that the layers
wouldn't shift.  In theory.

She had a design in mind and brought over a dress that she had borrowed from a friend of hers that fit pretty well and she liked a lot.  From there, we found a similar bodice pattern in my Lutterloh collection, took her measurements, and drafted a fitted bodice pattern:

We then made a muslin from this pattern, tried it on her, and I pinned and adjusted it for fit (not photographed).  From there, we cut the outer pieces and the lining pieces from what was left of the top part of the maternity skirt.  Yes, she lined it.  Lining a dress (or jacket, or what have you) used to scare the bejeezus out of me, until I started sewing the maternity dresses for Jules Ford just this past year.  Yet she tackled it without hesitation, only asking me how to get from point A to point B, and soldiering through it all.  Such bravery!

She learned a lot in the process (and quite possibly some choice swear words from me, as those darn skirt layers kept shifting, and shifting, and shifting.....): how to draft a pattern of sorts, how to make a muslin and adjust it, how to line a dress with a fitted bodice, how to insert a zipper, how to gather the skirt, and some of the hand-finishing techniques used on a lined dress.  Just blows my mind; at that age, I think I was still getting over making a mediocre C- on the simplest A-line Home Ec skirt project ever.  That experience almost made me give up sewing forever.

All of this was accomplished over the course of about three weeks, with the last of the hand-finishing done this afternoon.  She could only work on it in spurts on the weekends, because she carries quite a full load at school.  But it was oh, so worth it:

Mission accomplished!
Nothing quite like the satisfaction that comes from wearing something
you created, from the design idea through to the finished garment.
This bodice fits her perfectly, and we can use the adjusted muslin to
work on future projects.  Bonus!

Tried to get a better shot of the bodice - but my camera just hated
focusing on that black and white fabric.  I think her smile was
more important, anyway.

Another view - we tried so hard to keep
the flirtiness of the underskirt/overskirt, but that
top layer of sheer chiffon-type fabric almost
drove us nuts.  But she persevered!

Polka Dotty!


(These four photos were taken by Son # 1)

And yes, for those of you wondering whether the Sewing Assistant had a hand paw in things, I can assure you he did.  Here he is, consulting with her about her next refashion:

"Now about this seam, here....this is what I think you should do...."

....and consulting with me, over camera settings and such:

"Here.  Let me help with those buttons....or maybe that dangling lens cap...."

Absence makes the blog go flounder

LOL!  Not the best title in the whole world, but I'm pressed for time while altering about 20 percussion ensemble uniforms for tomorrow's competition, cooking for 50 (for the same comp), experimenting with meatless taco filling for the vegetarians in the ensemble (and the instructors - here's hoping it's not an epic fail!), trying to fill orders for a couple of regular clients and juggling smaller jobs that have started coming in again....

Not sleeping much these days!

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I helped my son's girlfriend work on a spectacular refashion.  I'd love to post photos, but she took the dress (made from a maternity skirt) home to complete so we don't have pictures yet of the finished garment.  Soon, I promise.  Soon.

I also got a bee in my bonnet about my purse - I made one a couple of months ago, and found that even though I loved it, it was too cavernous for my taste - I just couldn't find anything in it.  So I decided to start recycling some jeans that a really good friend donated to the cause, and using a Vogue pattern, this is what I came up with:

This is the front panel, with an external zippered pocket.
The fabric was a freebie from Dorell Fabrics in Fountain Valley-
they sell upholstery material but sometimes they have
bits and pieces that are just too small to do much with -
you can take one free sample every time you go into the shop. 

The inside of the front pocket.  It's lined with another
recycled garment, a blouse that a friend didn't wear anymore.

The inside of the purse, with a couple more open pockets.
Nothing moves in here when it's zipped shut, and it's not so
deep that I can't see things when I'm looking for them.
Bonus!

My favorite part of the pattern - a side zip pocket.
You can put one on either side of the purse but I opted to
put only one in this time - I only had one zipper of this
length and color.  Next time I will line this particular
pocket (and the matching one on the other side, should
I put one in) with a fabric that matches the outer
fabric - the way the zipper is put in, you can just see the lining
around the perimeter of the zipper.  Bummer.  But this one's
not for sale, anyway, so lesson learned.  

Nicely reinforced shoulder strap (while not being too stiff); bag is stablized with fusible fleece so it is still a bit slouchy but doesn't slump; lots of pocketses for everything to have its own place (with a nod to Lord of the Rings); overall a fairly easy pattern to work with.  This may become my favorite bag pattern.  And I have three boxes of jeans to go through....each pair renders one complete handbag using this pattern (Vogue V8661).  I've already had two requests to make more, with fabric for the front panel that has special meaning for the recipients.  A nice way to refashion jeans and to keep a treasured swatch of fabric close at hand!

Of course, the Sewing Assistant remains hard at work, inspecting each incoming order, large or small.  

Or comfy, regardless of size.

Quality Control Expert, hard at work.

In other crafty news, it appears that my sons have been bitten by the craft bug.  Picture any other 20 year old young man, dressed head to toe in black (and variations of black), rides motorcycles, studying to become a machinist and loving every minute of being able to work with his hands, up to his elbows in some kind of engine fluid or other, surrounded by motorcycle bits and parts.

Now picture that young man making something as cool as this to give his girlfriend for Valentines Day (and reserving a single bloom for his dear ol' mum):

These are coffee filters, folks.  Watercolored by hand, hand cut, hand crafted with floral tape, and accented with extra recycled leaves cut from silk roses from one of my projects long ago - my wedding bouquet!  He presented them in a recycled tin from the Pirouline type cookies.  

Dude's got good genes, both the refashioning and the crafty kind.

If you look very carefully at that first photo, you can see the man as a little boy in the photo in the bottom right corner - he's the one dressed in red.  :)  

Whoa - It's Only Mid-January and I've Already Learned Something

A couple of things I've never attempted before (neither sober nor otherwise):  pattern drafting, and pattern grading.  For a very good reason.  Classes in flat pattern making are getting harder and harder to find at the local colleges - there used to be two nearby Community Colleges that had the class, then it went to every Spring when they downsized, and now I can't seem to ever find it listed.  Sigh.  Taking a computer-aided drafting class is all well and good if you can afford the software on your own - and that can run anywhere from $500 to over a grand, depending on what you want to do with it.

I don't know about you, but I don't currently have that kind of money floating around, just waiting to be frittered away on more software.

So over the years I've collected pattern-drafting books, both new and used (and the really technical ones?  You can pay around $200 for them sometimes.).  One came with a test version of the software, but it doesn't allow you to change the pattern styling, it only allows you to use the four or five patterns and type in your size to make that garment for yourself.  You can't save anything.  And the garments are ugly.  Most of the other books teach you how to alter a pattern to your liking - not quite what I'm after, but it's a start.  Unfortunately, some of these are so lightweight when it comes to explaining exactly what you're supposed to do that they are all but useless.

I keep hoping that I'll eventually have enough time to study all of these books, test out their advice, and see if I can figure out for myself exactly how one goes about drafting a pattern for a garment one would like to make, as well as grading it (for my non-sewing peeps, that means drafting multiples of the garment in different sizes).  But it's a daunting task.

Enter my pregnant client.  She is miserable right now, and since this is her second child, of course her body remembered EXACTLY how to expand at light speed.  So nothing fits.  She emailed me in desperation, hoping that I could whip out some roomy garments for her to wear before she had to start raiding her husband's closet (and we all remember how trendy that looks, right?).  Only her favorite pattern that she gave me was for her pre-pregnancy size and wouldn't fit her anymore.  And is no longer available.  ANYWHERE.

Sigh.  I got to work on some of the other garments we talked about, but that one dress kept coming back up to haunt me, along with another one that she really, really likes (The Soiree Dress from the Hatch Collection).  I so wanted to give her something other than just plain, boxy, oversized t-shirts to wear.  But these two dresses scared me half to death.  I didn't want to botch the process and waste the fabric she'd already bought.  But it kept me up at night - I just couldn't stand it and decided that I had nothing to lose.  I went to the local fabric store and bought inexpensive knit material to attempt the Soiree style (figuring that if I botched it, I was only out about $12).  I spent days and days and days (and sleepless nights) working things out in my head.  I cut out a couple of test swatches to see if I could figure out how to do that fabulous draping, or something similar.  I blew up the photos from the web site to see if I could figure out the construction.  No luck there, since they were too low resolution to be of any help.

Here is their version, in silks.
Now you can understand my freaking-outedness.

I was about to give up when a sewing friend happened to come over to pick something up (completely non-sewing related) and I snagged her for a quick look-see.  She ruminated about it, took a look at the pattern I'd drafted, looked at the sample, and picked up the fabric panel I'd cut out and started draping it on me.  She looked at the one on the internet (even though we couldn't do an extreme closeup, darn it) and agreed that I was on the right track.  That gave me what I needed to get over my fear of failure.  So after sewing it up and trimming off the excess at the bottom, here's what I came up with:

Here is my version, waiting for hems.
And for someone with legs.
Not bad for my very first drafting effort from scratch.
Don't bug me right now about the lack of finesse.

And I just happened to catch the First Sewing
Assistant, Retired, there in the background.

About five seconds before the Current Sewing Assistant
went diving through the skirt.

I'll let you know how that one goes over (thankfully, not literally) - I'm just glad I was able to get that shaping & draping without jumping off a bridge somewhere. (My eternal thanks, Laura!)

As for the other dress, I was crushed when I got home from my client's house to find that the pattern was never going to fit her in her current state - we both looked, online and in stores, and no one has that pattern anymore. In ANY size.  (Curse you, Butterick - it's a cute pattern, too....)  I kept taking it out of the envelope and staring at it in a mild panic, and then setting it aside.

The Sewing Assistant decided to go to work on grading it himself, using his own particular method:

Yeah.  It's a real easy pattern, until you try grading it yourself.
Look at all those lovely, interlocking, self-lining pieces.
Along with more of that side draping.
That needs to be expanded to accommodate pregnancy.
(Cue mad screaming and running for the hills here.)

After letting the Sewing Assistant take a stab at it (literally), I kept thinking, and thinking, and thinking.....I'd read articles on how patterns are graded commercially and what parts of the pattern can be expanded, while others areas need to be increased only infinitesemally infinitismally MICROSCOPICALLY.  Threads published a really good article on it not too long ago.  I sure wish I could find that particular magazine.  (Want a matching headache?  Here's part of the article: http://www.threadsmagazine.com/item/4368/making-sense-of-pattern-grading/page/all)

Thinking.

Thinking.

And finally, I just DID.  This was after I talked her into letting me draft a very simple caftan, similar to the styles you can find in any department store right now.  I just couldn't admit defeat.  So I took out my rulers & my drafting pencils and got to it.  I looked very carefully at the pattern pieces and where the existing sizes were drawn out bigger (and how much bigger), where they stayed the same or moved very little, found some points of reference (like corners and pattern markers), and drew a straight line out along the existing points to where I thought the next size would be and marked a new point on the pattern paper I'd taped onto the old one.  I followed each pattern piece around and continued drawing out new points, connecting them by following the contours of the existing pattern piece.  In some places I just eyeballed it - I couldn't tell by how much it should be increased (there was no continuity between sizes in those places).  I cut out the new pattern pieces and then the fabric (shudder, shudder, shudder....that she brought home from NYC).  

And just about died when it all came together and fit perfectly.  Well, almost.  And that wasn't from the inexpert grading, it was actually a sewing bobble I can't believe I did.  

You can't see me now, but I'm doing The Happy Dance.  Alternating with the Duck and Cover Dance, since I imagine someone else is going to ask me to repeat this miracle performance, and I'm not quite sure I'll be able to.  But crisis averted for this client, for the time being.  

I just hope she doesn't get too much bigger in the next couple of months.....

Crafty Cat and Crafty Hats

Wow.  Where on earth is January going so fast?  You'd think someone somewhere sped up the cosmic clock or something, the rate it's going.  I'm still geeking out about how quickly 2011 disappeared, apparently while I was off looking in another direction.  In a state of total bemusement, most likely.

Not as much as usual to show for the first (nearly) two weeks of the new year - but I haven't been totally idle, mind you.  Just not swamped.  I'm luxuriating in that sensation, I can tell you.  I'm sure more work is coming down the pike faster than I can say "I'm sure more work is coming down the pike..."  While I've had some breathing room from client orders, I decided the time was right to work on some sewing for charity - and to start a new "tradition" for the Sewing Assistant, who, try as I might, simply refuses to stay fired.  Looks like he has tenure.  So, while he remains (permanently) in my employ - following no one's rules but his own, of course - he might as well dress the part, don't you think?  I was chatting with one of my clients last week about a project we will be working on and we were both laughing about how neither of us currently wears things to represent what we do - which is silly, actually, since I do so much sewing for other people.  I should really be wearing my own work.  What better way to advertise my skills than that?  Somehow, it always seems to be selfish or idle, since I'm not getting paid for it.  Yet, the reason I wanted to sew like this in the first place was to continue my lifelong pursuit of creating things with my hands, and making a statement about myself in the process.  So that is this year's goal (not resolution - GOAL - I have found that when I attach the former word to my plans, they go directly out the window) - to start WEARING MY WORK.  Literally.  And I'm planning to have some fun with it along the way.  Whether it speaks about my identity remains to be seen, but it should definitely speak about my abilities, at any rate.

So since I have made plans for making things for myself to help represent me, my work, my abilities, and my craftiness/artfulness, I figure the Sewing Assistant should reap the same benefits.  And boy, does he like to strut his stuff.  I've been making him interchangeable collar covers every couple of weeks since right before Christmas, and I've never seen a cat look for so much attention due to what he's wearing before.  It's pretty humorous to watch him preen in front of anyone who notices the new collar cover - you'd think he was posing for the cover of Cat Fancy or something.

 REPRESENT!

Neko wearing his Christmas striped collar cover, while simultaneously
attempting to un-decorate the tree my son and his girlfriend had
just finished trimming.  What you can't see here is the ornament
he just knocked off the tree onto the floor, shortly before he
jumped down to play soccer with it.
And yes, that is his handiwork you see there on the back of the couch cover.  Yes, indeed.  Scratching posts be damned.

I didn't get a photo of the second collar cover, which we all decided needed to be changed after the New Year.  I made that one out of a lovely blue background with white frosty trees.  Plus glitter.  Lots of glitter. I thought it would make all the teenage/twenty-something guys who come and go around here (quite a few of them on motorcycles) groan and roll their eyes.  Strangely enough, that hasn't been the case.  And now as soon as they come in the door, they are all asking, "Where's Neko?  What's he wearing today?"

Sounds like a serious Sewing Challenge to me.

The third collar cover to make its appearance so far this year:
Leopard Velboa.
Fuzzy, Big Cat-ish, and Stylin'.  He's loving it so far.
And loving my sewing chair, as you can see here.  He keeps stealing it....

Thankfully, most of these are from either the remnant bins or the flat-fold (i.e. CHEAP) sections of the local fabric stores I've been known to haunt.  So when he trashes one (like the pretty blue one I didn't have a chance to photograph), I don't worry about it too much.  He provides such a nice contrast to any color or print I can put on him, I predict that this is going to be the start of quite the wardrobe.  Maybe I'll need to hire a stylist for him....

I probably should hire one for myself, while I'm at it.  My friend whose daughter is working on her Girl Scout Gold Award wanted to take a photo of me with the huge sack of fleece hats I made for the project.  (About 38 or so of them, actually.)  Of course, I couldn't just stand there and hold them.  I absolutely had to wear one.  I chose the one that made me think of Winnie the Pooh for some reason.....

Her camera was acting up, so we had to suffice with
a cell phone shot, which is why I look very disproportionate.
Yeah, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

I had wanted more of the red to show up, because this hat just
screamed POOH!, but it doesn't show here as much as I had wanted.
Most likely due to the giant hair clip I had holding my hair in a bun
in the back - it kept pulling the hat to the back so you couldn't see the red.

It's awesome to work with a young designer - she's been making these hats herself, to wear to night practice during marching season, to give as gifts, etc. for quite some time now.  Her designs are clever, colorful, and a whole lot of fun to see & wear.  She's making this batch (somewhere in the neighborhood of about 100, I believe) to give to kids in the hospital, especially to chemo patients.  I can't wait to hear how well they are all received.  I can't imagine ANYONE stifling a smile or an outright fit-o-giggles when they start modeling these.

Any time you can bring a spot of joy into someone's life, no matter how briefly, is well worth it.  Which is why I always accept projects like this - helps me keep my head on straight by helping me put things into a greater perspective.  And I can never fault the time spent doing that.

On Vacation...NOT!

Hoo, boy.  December has been busy, even with my maternity client taking a vacation for the month.  It was probably a good thing, too, since I had orders coming in left and right and was literally working until about an hour before Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve!  Even so, there were a couple of things I didn't get done that I was really wanting to do, but....you have to look at things by what you were able to accomplish, not necessarily by what you were NOT.

This was the month for embroidery orders, that's for sure.  There were more than a few large orders for the appliqued onesies this month for stores, but also some requests for custom embroidered ones:

TOO CUTE!
(I have to admit this was a
personal favorite - my initials
were E.L.F. before I got married.)

Ok, the Sweet Tart Lab client and I were scratching
our heads over this one.  All we could
figure was maybe the kid's name
was Chase?

Working away on the onesies orders to be done by Christmas, my client was suddenly struck with the realization that she needed gifts for the little girls from her daughter's preschool who were coming over for a little party & dinner.  She had purchased these cute PJs for each of them, and asked me to customize them for the girls.  Hopefully she'll be able to forward a photo with the three of them in matching tops:

Following that came the Great Blanket Glut of 2011....LOL!

Two for the Sweet Tart Lab:

One for a good friend (band mom), whose son wanted to give his girlfriend something unique for Christmas:

This one came bundled from the store in a black belt-like
ribbon - by the time I was done stitching and re-packaging
it in the black ribbon it looked like I had stuffed Santa
into the shopping bag, LOL!!!!

Another good friend (colorguard mom) came over with her daughter, with a Girl Scout gold award project I'll be helping her with (stay tuned - should be in the next post), spied the above blanket, and the lettering on the PJs and ordered this for her boyfriend:

She designed this herself, with the treble clef subbing as
the "&" sign, since they have been performing together
for four years, and dating for nearly that long!

A couple months ago I embroidered about 19 cheerleading warmup jackets for someone who was referred to me by yet another band mom (anyone else starting to hear the theme song from "It's A Small World"?).  When that project was done, she asked if I were able to do custom blankets.  I love designing things with the software I bought to go with my Husqvarna/Viking machine - and this was something I could totally sink my teeth into - custom design & digitizing (yeah, baby!).  She is hoping that when the other hockey team moms get wind of this custom blanket, she'll be bringing me more orders for them:

Her son's team is in Anaheim, so they are the Anaheim Junior Ducks.
They swiped the logo, not me.  (Whistles off into the distance....)
This is the coolest fabric I have stitched on to date:  faux suede with a faux
shearling underneath.  Scary, but it embroidered beautifully.  I finished it
with black satin blanket binding.  The photo totally doesn't do it justice.

Her daughter also goes to the same high school as all the aforementioned band kids - only she plays on the girl's volleyball team.  She had a school blanket already, but needed it customized for her daughter.  

There's a story you need to know about this one.  I hunted for quite some time, looking for just the right clip art image to digitize for the volleyball on the blanket.  I tried one after the other, but a lot of them digitized like something out of a caveman's nightmare - big, misshapen, and scary looking.  Weird.  FINALLY I lucked onto one that came through the digitizing looking familiar, at least - success!  The blanket, like a lot of the others shown here, is very plush fleece.  The Sewing Assistant fell in love with it immediately.  While I was hooping it up on one side, he had the other side in his mouth, purring, kneading kitty biscuits, refusing to let go.  I finally got him disengaged, and took it over to the machine to start the embroidery.  About five minutes into it, he came flying over the piano and landed with a thud on the blanket, fully intending to take up where he had left off.  I shooed him away again (and boy, can he grumble) and started the next color block, only to realize that he had knocked the hoop out of alignment by about an 1/8th inch.  OY!  I didn't realize it until the entire block (about 3,000 stitches!) was done, and I wasn't about to try to clip all those stitches out of a plush fleece blanket and try to start over.  UGH.  I let the rest of the embroidery stitch out, only to realize that her name at the bottom was going to run into the existing lettering on the corner of the blanket.  

The Sewing Assistant is fired, once again.  

I iz hiding.  You can't see me. 

Not enough time to start over.  NOT going to go out and buy another blanket for the client - school was out by this time and no one in the office with school merchandise!  I had to make do and fill in the stitching afterwards with some tiny zig-zags (and set the name off with darker thread):

This 1/8th inch is going to haunt me for my entire career.
However long that lasts. 

I didn't get another photo of it after I was done, but the client was good with the fix (the volleyball looked fine - and she totally understood the Sewing Assistant's strange fascination with this particular blanket).  

Are you exhausted yet?  I am.  But wait......there's more.....

Seven altered nightgowns for a neighbor's mother.  One custom fleece jacket for another neighbor (which I didn't get done before they left to visit that family member - argh!).  And one very special custom order for my son's girlfriend.  This one was totally icing on the cake - a jeans jacket refashion that he designed himself, using a thrift shop jacket he found in her size.  I bought the fabric for the refashion with a Joanns coupon I had (score!) and used some embroideries I bought from Embroidery Library with a coupon from them (score some more!) to update the look:

Before

After

Maneki Neko - with sushi!  Nom!!

He wanted to put a Yin Yang symbol somewhere on the
jacket.  I designed this one with the paw prints
to go with the Maneki Neko - came out really cute!

Happy recipient - that's what it's all about!  Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!

A Little Gift (And a Happy Cat Dance)

I like being busy, but it looks like things might be slowing down, at least for one of my clients for a while.  Which is okay, because it's that time of year again and I'm already doing last-minute gifts.  I wanted to post about this earlier, but it would have "let the cat out of the bag."  Or maybe into it?

IN THE BAG!

Needed to give a big thank-you on a small budget to some of the volunteers who helped me with the huge band project (see here) - always a brain-bender to figure out what to give that won't break the bank, but won't look cheap, either.

Embroidery Library to the rescue.

I love Embroidery Library - if you have an embroidery machine, and you don't know about this company (or its affiliate, Urban Threads), you need to click on over there.  Right.  Now.  Not only does Embroidery Library have some of the best looking embroidery files out there, they are well-digitized, stitch out perfectly (almost all of the time), and are VERY reasonably priced.  (If you are a bit on the wonky side, like me, you'll love Urban Threads for the same reasons - and add one more:  they have some of the quirkiest embroidery files on the net.)  They both have great sales.  They both have great specials.  And they BOTH give out freebies, so there is no excuse not to try out one of their great embroideries.  This week, Embroidery Library has a great file for free, and it came at just the right moment - problem solved!  I picked up some kitchen towels at my local Dollar Tree (you have to select very carefully - not all of them are things I would consider giving, even with some fancy embroidery on them....) and zoomed home to stitch up some thank-yous:

Plain Dollar Tree kitchen towel on the left.
Embroidered embellishment on the right - this was a freebie!  Amazing!

All three recipients were thrilled and very grateful - I just hope they know how much I appreciated their going above & beyond to help me out this season!  (N., S., and C. - if you're reading this, I will love you always!  S. - Thank you Spoon Much!)

So many blankets....all for me, right?

Still working on Takara Baby blankets - Neko adores the fabric and it's all I can do to keep him out of the stash when they hit the house.

He is such a goof.  Orders for the onesies for Sweet Tart Lab are exploding through the roof, and he has to personally inspect every order that comes through.

Even when he thinks no one is looking.

Okay, let me start counting all the onesies......
one,
two,
three.....forty-leven.....

(....and dance like no one is watching! La, la, la, la, la.....)

Once in awhile I get to do some custom embroidery for Sweet Tart Lab.  This blanket was sent to her by a client who wanted some personalization done on it for her son.  She sent one that she'd had done for her daughter previously, and wanted the text to match on her son's new blanket.

Yoiks.

Fortunately, I happened to have the exact same font, so all went well.

HAD to place it next to the heart, between the two boats.
Thought it looked really nice, there.  

I love my embroidery machine.  Thank you, Husqvarna Viking!  I had a chance recently to test-drive their newest machine, the Diamond Deluxe.  Totally drool-worthy.  (Saving my pennies.)

Final Count for November:
22 Velour baby blankets
79 Onesies (most appliqued, one custom embroidered)
7 Maternity items
19 Cheerleading Jackets
1 PJ repair
1 Knit shirt repair
6 Placemats, 6 Napkins, 1 Table runner repair (finely woven from Guatemala - had to secure the fraying edges)
3 Thank-you towel gifts