April Birthday Celebration

Follow-up

Okay, this is a follow-up to my post: Movie Star for a Month.  This month it was My Birthday, too.  at the time of the previous post, I didn't  have the cake yet, so here is the Magnificent cake from Brittany....

I had been so busy that it was the day before the party and I realized I didn't have a party dress... Oh My... So I had already purchased this great fabric a linen blend $3/yd on the JA 50% off clearance days, and of course washed and ready to go, as is all my fabric when I get it home... I like to be ready... I had a dress pattern picked out that I wanted to make with it, so I set out to go for it. No pix as I went, so all I have is a done picture the following day in my office.  McCall's M6115 pattern.

So, i am including some photos from the party. I embroider tags with Happy Birthday and their name on it and put it on the beanie birthday bears.

Here's the set up before the pot-luck lunch food comes...  I try to make it festive, but we don't over power the room, just this little section.  It is Pot-Luck, and we put more dollars into the food than into decorating the WHOLE kitchen :-)

The teams have to rotate in since part of the team is a call center, and need to cover the phones....

Then we had the return of the Angry Birds Toss Game that I created - Post here.  It made it's debut at our holiday party in 2012. One of my colleagues calls me the CFO: Chief Fun-times Officer.... LOL...

Here are the two celebrants Marlene and Tom Playing...  The door that is there is the door to my office :-)

That concludes this post.  LOL

Oh Yea... Happy Birthday to Me!

Cheers, 

JDol

Be a Movie Star Jan-April

Fun times at work 2013

Well, long ago, there used to be monthly birthday celebrations at my office.  It was a whole different crowd of folks at that time, and we were in the old "scary" building.  I call it scary because getting to work at 4-5 am, in that neighborhood was sometimes scary.  We are now a mile away in a beautiful office complex.  Boy i couldn't wait to get outta Taft.  In fact when the new office suite was ready for occupancy I immediately went over there every day even though the rest of the office wasn't moved in yet! It was sooo much nicer, and I love new things, so...  Well, anyway, somewhere along the way the celebrations got lost in the sauce, and I'm often trying to think of things for morale around the office.  Things that everyone can participate in.  Two years ago, maybe three now, I organized an outing to a nearby Laser Tag center and about 18 of us met up on a Saturday to play Laser Tag... that was fun!  I'm not the office manager or admin or anything, I'm a project accountant, reporting to a whole different functional area, but these guys are my work family.... I organize and put together the holiday party every year, and make gifts for everyone, This last year's gifts were personalized mouse pads with company logos and contract specific titling, with their names embroidered on them.  I had designed the artwork for the mouse pad in Photoshop and had them printed up at Discount Mugs then embroidered them.  Here's a pic:

Anyway...... So I asked management at the office for approval to start Pot-Luck Birthday celebrations each month... Approved. They would even reimburse the cake.  All else Pot-Luck... So far so good - this is April and next week is our April Party... 

So I started a tradition that everyone gets to be a movie star for the month.  I did it in January and they all got a kick out of it so it's a tradition now.  So I'm going to blog the before and after pix.  So here are the first 4 months.

January - Liz and Garth

Liz Original

Movie Original Cover

Liz's Movie Cover

Garth original Photo

Original Movie Cover

Garth's Movie Cover

FEBRUARY

Alphonse Original Photo

Original Movie Cover

Alphonse's Movie Cover

MARCH

David & Jamie's Original Photos... I had photo shoots with these 2 guys because i picked the movie out and their characters...

Original Movie Cover

Jamie & David Movie Cover

APRIL

Marlene Original Picture - I had a photo shoot with Marlene, too...  She had fun trying to give me that "hard tough girl" look.  We took a series of them and I got the exact look I wanted.  I used to be a professional photographer doing weddings and portraits, and I remembered what i had loved about it.  I was always able to coax the looks out of my clients...  They always ended up having fun also...they use to remark that they always had dreaded their picture taken but that I made it fun for them... This is the shot I used for the movie cover....

Here is Tomb Raider...

And Here is Marlene...

I think she'll get a kick out of it...

Here we go with Tom's Original Picture - I Grabbed this one from a previous gathering...  He works at the second location, so this will be a total surprise to him.. This photo worked out great for the movie cover...

Tom's Original Movie...

Tom's Movie Cover...

And wouldn't you know April is my birth month, too, so I had to find a movie for myself too!  I searched High and Low, it took a while and then had my own self photo shoot... I am using this original....

For this movie...

Here I am...

So That's it for now, Jan through April... I will make a post for next month - It's Amber's Birthday - I have a movie i think I'm going to use picked out...

Oh yeah - and I put the movie photos on each cake that we make for the parties.  Here are the cakes so far.  Brittany from Weis makes them for me.  I'll never forget the first cake I ordered from there.  I went there because they make some real nice and fancy cakes, and I figured I'd get a WOW! cake, so I placed the order with Brittany, and then when I picked it up, OMG it was so horrible I couldn't believe it.  Do you know those cakes that are sitting in the case pre-done with a Happy Birthday on them?  Well it was worse than those.  With my photos on it.  I was horrified!  I couldn't imagine showing up to our first party with that cake!  I wish I had taken a picture of it, but I didn't.  I talked it over with Brittany who knew I was disappointed, and she offered to redo the top for me. (She didn't make the one I picked up another person did it that day...)  I was able to wait for 1/2 hour while she re-did it and what a difference it was like night and day.  The first cake was so drab it didn't even look like a birthday cake - the Happy birthday writing was the only thing that even hinted at it.  This new design definitely was celebratory... Now mind you the cakes have been improving every month as we go on, we are now into the spray painting and such, but the WOW! effect is there, more than a plain white cake with Happy Birthday written on it, and some sprinkles.  Here are the cakes...

January

February

March

Hope you enjoyed my Movie Covers so Far, and Brittany's cakes.  They are delicous...

Cheers!

JDol

Native American Shirt

Store Bought...Hand Embellished - for my SWAP...

Well, Ran into a standstill on my SWAP...as my fellow swapper Syndi put it, the race was fun, but I got burnt out...  I lost my SWAP mojo....Until... DH showed me this website: Indian Village Mall  They have an enormous collection of Native American items... I am very drawn to Native American art and culture, and love the clothing.  I had just completed a Red Motorcycle Outfit In this Previous Post that had a Dream Catcher and some Feather embroidery on it.  Once I saw that website and the denim shirts they show, It all of a sudden hit me...I could build my other half of SWAP into a southwestern/Native American collection - I already had two tops and two bottoms for that side. (Once I cleared that my vest was a top, too, since it is worn that way, with no indecency.) So I could make one of these shirts and have that as my third top, then make the bridging Native American Poncho which would also go with all my moto gear on the other side of my collection, and Poof! my SWAP is done.  So, I couldn't summon the courage/energy to find a pattern and fabric to make the shirt I wanted, so I purchased a denim shirt and will embellish that.  the SWAP rules allow for a purchased item, so it will be legal, and the embellishing is what makes it fit the collection. And I can't wait to make it!.

Bought the shirt - a burgundy - so it goes with my made jeans as well as my made skirt.

Now to choose the embroidery designs... OK, I love wolves, so there's been a Wolf Design that I've wanted to do for a long time. what better incentive than a SWAP piece to encourage me to put the time in....

The design is larger than my hoop size, so I will have to shrink it.  It is not suggested to shrink/enlarge designs at whim, because it alters stitches, etc.  I've never had disasters yet, so let's go for it.  This one is 51K stitches and 34 thread changes! Yikes!!! but I'll settle in and go for the long haul.

So let's import it into DRAWings software to shrink it.  Now it fits in my hoop...

It is too large for one file, so I'll need to save it as two.  One plus is that it is now approximately 45K stitches.

I decided I'd like to put fringe on the shirt, so part of the fringe is going along the back yoke, as such.  So I needed to measure so that my design would fall below the fringe.  First mark the bottom of the fringe line

And then mark the middle of the design for where the hoop center is going. 

Then to pick out all the threads - I write the colors out so I don't get confused as I go.. I use Sulky threads.  I only really use them by default, because when I got the machine she had a huge collection of threads and they were Sulky, so I just kept up the tradition.  If any machine embroiderers out there have any other opinions, I'll listen :-) ....

The first file... 93 minutes , but only 13 color changes, so that's easier than all those little changes that will come near the end in the second file...

Well I got hooped and set to press start at 7:30 last night, lasted about 1/2 hour before I was wiped out. Figured I'd pick it up this morning

All done with the first file... It took forever.  I was also very nervous, because do you see the border above? The white diamond? well it's closer on the right than on the left.  I was real nervous that it wasn't going to fit.  If you recall up in the photo of when I was re-sizing the file, the hoop in the software was horizontal, so I was a little less critical of centering the image left to right, than I was top to bottom. After all, I only shrunk it a minimal amount and pushed it to the edges as much as possible. So, when the design got saved, it saved it into a vertical hoop direction, and I didn't think anything of it, UNTIL it had already stitched quite a ways out and got to an outline and I noticed it was off center!  It was only a little bit, but I'm a worry-er... I couldn't stop now, I was too invested at that point. So I had no choice but to keep going and pray for the best.  Wouldn't you know that final border wouldn't be stitched until the very end of this file which turned out to be around the T minus 12 minute mark and 25K stitches.  BOY was I thankful that it made it!!!!!!  Lesson learned: Just make sure it is saved dead center, so it makes no matter how the file saves itself!

On to the 2nd file... this one's only 59 minutes, but 21 color changes....

I survived!!!!! And gee the result was worth it!!!! I'm so happy with this design.

So with the fringe it will look awesome...

So far so good on my shirt.

Now onto the front pockets... Still need to decide on the embroidery... I will look around at The Library, and at Designs  I already have some, but let's see what else is out there...

OK, I want Kachinas one for each pocket. Decided on a Rain Maker and a Sun Dancer.

So now to take off the pockets.. It seems that I can take them most off and leave the top on where it is reinforced. It seems to hoop okay.

I'm up for sewing out another one, what d'ya say? 71 minutes 14 changes. Let's go for it.

We survived another one!

Once the pocket gets sewn back on... I will also add fringe to the shoulders.

My other Kachina...

Well I started this one got a little into it, and couldn't go another stitch!  Total wipe out.  Been at it for 9 hours... Yikes!  That might be all I have in me for the day, or.. I might just need a rest for a few hours, and then pick it back up, just finish this design after dinner.  It's 4 pm now.  (been bloggin' for an hour)... Well, more later on....

Well after Dinner and a Movie (Collateral with Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx) had some energy and finished up the Sun Dance Kachina.. Ahhh yes..

So When the pockets are sewn back together...

And the fringe is added...

All in all not a bad sewing day.. Got a lot accomplished...Tomorrow will have fresh eyes and pick up with designing sleeves and yoke, and that should do it.

Niters Gracie...

Okay All ready to power onward...

So I selected the print to go on the yoke, so let's line that up with the fringe and give it a stitch line...

Line up the sides, and the front of the yoke with the front fringe.  I basically did this all as I went - no measuring, cutting to a pattern, or anything like that...Just lining everything up and pinning... I sewed the cotton onto the the shirt, as opposed to replacing the yoke with the cotton piece; the denim was much stronger and heavier weight, so I wanted to keep that together.

Well there was really nothing much left to take pictures of as I finished it up... I double stitched the cotton yoke panel and that was set.  Then I opened up the arm seams to install the arm fringe, and sew it back up...That was so easy it was almost a crime. Then top-stitch the front pockets back in place, and that's it.  All Done...

SWAP Piece # 10! Two collections completed, now just the bridging poncho, which is also so easy it's also almost a crime.

Here are the pix of my Native American Shirt

From This to This:

And This to This:

And in Action:

 Hip Hip Hoo-Ray!!!

Cheers, 

Jo