Appliqued Onesies

I'm going to keep right on sharing some of the clothes that I have made for Esther, keeping going with the momentum from my Kids Clothes Week posts.  Although technically I didn't make these onesies for her, I embellished them.  You know how if you get a pack of four or five onesies, three or four are cute and one or two say "I'm a princess" or "just perfect"?  No offense intended if you are into those types of sayings, but they are not really my thing.  Plus I love getting to give her things a more handmade touch, so I have been having a great time appliqueing designs on onesies (similar to the appliqued t-shirts I made several years ago).   This time I tried using steam-a-seam lite instead of regular and found that was great for keeping the shirts from getting stiff and it was easier to stitch through.

It's a fun challenge picking the right applique for each onesie to cover up the saying or icon that was originally there.  The first batch of these that I made (with the flower, watermelon, and umbrella) I did the applique on my machine, using the free motion foot.  With the big designs, especially the umbrella, it was trickier than I expected to keep the rest of the shirt out of the way and keep the design flat as I worked on it, so the stitching is a little wonky but I don't really mind.  I was curious to see how they would turn out with hand stitching so for the second batch (with the star and the strawberries) I hand-sewed the appliques with a simple running stitch and a single strand of embroidery floss.  That obviously took more time but was easier to control and turned out more neatly.  I enjoyed both techniques and think that which one is better to do really just depends what you feel like at the time.  I didn't do it on either of these but I think it would be fun to add some more embroidered details when doing the handstitching, so maybe I'll try that on my next ones!

I think I had just made the strawberry one in this picture, whereas you can see that the umbrella one has gotten lots of good use - I like the fuzzy frayed edges!

I don't think that I had seen the thimble blossoms umbrella quilt when I designed this onesie, or at least I wasn't thinking of it consciously but it is a pretty similar idea!  I figured an umbrella quilt would be good for a Portland baby.

Really, this picture is just here because it's cute.  I'm having such a fun time with this cutie.  Although photo shoots are continuing to get more and more difficult - I am still ending up with a lot of shots like this (she is increasingly mobile and wants to eat the camera):

Also, I never shared the photos of her wearing the grey striped cardigan from KCW, so here are a few:

She has been getting a ton of use out of this shirt (and really, all the shirts I made her, but this is especially a favorite).  I'm so glad I picked the green buttons, I love how they look!