Chair Name Tag Thingies

(honestly - I have GOT to find a better name for these things!)

Hallelujah!  My chair name-tag thingies are finished!  (Remember this post?) They are basically like pillowcases that go over the back of my sisters dining chairs.  I finally finished all 12 of them.  Mom, Dad, seven children, and three guests are all going to have their own unique chairs!  

My brother-in-law ("DAD") is not as conservative as my husband, but still, I'm hoping he doesn't look at these and get dizzy.  Or shield his eyes and run away.  That's some crazy fabric, huh?

Rosalie, on the other hand, will really like them.  I'm hoping they all will.  I mean, that's 6 months of work so - yeah, I'd like them to be appreciated.  But then again, they're kids (*sigh*).

I didn't want to put individual pictures of all of them, that would make this post really long, and honestly, I didn't think anyone (other than myself) would want to see each of them.  So here's my collage.  Fun, huh?

All of my letters are hand-cut and appliquéd in some fashion.  I stitched around the edges of all of the letters as well as all of the shapes, including the critters so that nothing would come off without some effort.  And they're all made with some amount of reverse-applique.  And vinyl.  And love - lots of it!

So now they're in the mail.  I'm praying that they are big enough (I never got an exact measurement on the chair backs).  If they're not big enough, I'm practicing my speech to my sister: "Look on the bright side - you can always stuff them, then everyone will have their own little pillow!"  (Who knows - maybe God will stretch them in transit?!!)

:) Caren

Will this project EVER get finished?!!!

Do you have projects like that?  I usually tell people to start small so they don't get overwhelmed and quit before completion.  On this project, however, I did not take my own advice.

So what is the project?  Well, this is a little in-process photo I took.  It is the applique for a chair cover.  Not just any chair cover, though.  See my sister has seven kids.  And she asked me a while back if I could make something that gave each chair a name (assumedly so there were not so many squabbles over who sits where).

She has 12 dining chairs total, and if my math is correct, that's 9 family members plus 3 guests.  So I'm putting names on 9 and the other 3 will be different creatures.  (A frog, a cat, and a lizard - they live in Florida).  A while ago I scored some discounted vinyl at the Joann's in town.  Since most of the family is under 15, I wanted to make sure these were fully machine-washable and would stand up to a lot of abuse.

So I made most of the names out of vinyl with reverse-appliqued letters.  Praise God they turned out pretty good!  That was a LOT of work.  See, here's how it went.

First, I printed out the names.  Then traced them onto Freezer Paper (I love that stuff!).  Then I ironed the freezer paper right to the front of the vinyl. Beneath the vinyl is a fabric (fabrics for all of the names were different).  Took it to the sewing machine and stitched around each letter (like I said - a TON of work - most of it was hand-cranked instead of using the pedal).  Then for the fun part!

I took my itty bitty embroidery scissors and cut out the inside of each letter, to reveal that fantastic fabric underneath!  See how the vinyl makes those letters POP?!!!  Super coolness!!!

My sister is in town right now on vacation, and this was supposed to be her Christmas gift, but as you can see, it's not finished.  So I took her to dinner last night (thanks to husbands who took care of the kids!) and showed her first the fabrics, then each of the name/creature plates.  She was astonished.  Loved them.

So now, I just have to add the plates to the fabrics, make all 12 into pillowcase-style chair coverings, and hem.  No biggie, right, now that the hard part is over.  Should take me a bit less than the 6 months I've already been working on this project.  No problem - what are sisters for!
:) Caren