it seems like everyone's having babies, so i've done A LOT of hand and machine embroidered bibs over the past year! my best friend's son is now 13months old, so he's long past the point where he needs drool bibs, now he needs full coverage, easy to clean FOOD bibs!
i've seen so many cute bibs made out of oil cloth, but it's pretty much impossible to find here. plus, it's not so much my best friend's style!
i'd been thinking about making vinyl bibs for a while, and i finally got around to it in time for christmas.
i digitized all of the designs using PE Design Lite software, and then machine embroidered them. PE Design Lite doesn't have a whole lot of font options (30 or so), so i created files in photoshop with the words, and then digitized them.
this image is from a wingding font, i think it was 80s themed. the design took FOREVER to stitch, well over half an hour, and it stretched the vinyl out quite a bit, even with the stabilizer, which was irritating.
when i gave this bib to them, my friend told her son ""you'll never know what this is, but i will!" it's true, i didn't even think of that!
it's backed with brightly striped flannelette. i LOVE this vinyl, it's the same stuff i used for the
vinyl octopus last winter. it's got great depth to the colour, it's almost pearlescent.
this one was a wingding as well, though i forget which font it was. halloween maybe?
i wanted a gothier type design!
it's backed in a skull print flannelette that i bought at joanns on halloween for 70% off. they only had about a yard left, not enough for a bigger project.
this one is a sublime stitching pattern that's been digitized, it was one of the
samples i posted when i first started playing with the software.
it's backed with the same skull flannelette.
glitter vinyl!
torbot is one of his nicknames!
this one is backed with a star patterned cotton, because i didn't have a flannelette that matched.
their family celebrates "gothmas" in addition to the christmas that the extended family celebrates (his mom hates the tackiness of christmas), so i HAD to make him a gothmas bib!
i'm really irritated that the "mas" isn't straight, but i wasn't going to restitch all the rest of it (or waste the metallic thread i'd already used!).
the holly is embroidered in metallic thread. i think the silver was coats and clark, and the red was gutermann. i stitched the leaves twice, because the silver thread broke and it was really obvious where i rethreaded it. going over it again covered that up and made the colour a lot more dense.
after i embroidered the writing, i went back and carefully stitched around each letter with the metallic thread to tie it in to the holly better. i think i'm crazy, it took forever!
it's backed with a black cotton that has silver holly printed on it. i didn't like how thin the cotton was on the backing of the glitter vinyl bib, so i added a layer of black flannelette between the vinyl and the cotton on this one.
honestly, i'm not that happy with this one. my friend LOVED it, and i love it in theory, but it was really rushed, and i'm not perfectly happy with the lining up, or the shade of grey thread i used (it was the closest shade i had on hand.) but at least THEY loved, that's what's important, right?
i also did a set of machine embroidered bibs for
sweets4ever and her son camden as well, since camden's cousin was born within weeks of him. i'm much older than my cousins, and i was always sad about it, so i'm kind of jealous that he's got a friend for life out of the deal!
i didn't like any of the fonts that were with the PE Design Lite, so i wrote up the message in a photoshop file, using one of the thousands of fonts i have on my computer. i'm not really happy with the extra stitching on the left side of the Fs, but oh well, i'm learning new things every time!
these were embroidered on brown ultrasuede, and then backed with polka dot flanellette.
i hope you like them! comment AND criticisms are welcome!
