8th Grade Party t-shirt

A t-shirt design plus three color options.  Creating the annual 8th grade party/class shirt design was done using black, white and bright royal screen printing ink.  A-Team apparel out of Prairie City, IA were contracted to print and fine tune the design.  The finished product was a huge hit.  Thanks A-Team Apparel for sponsoring the Pella Grade Party this year!

Custom Party Dress

Kudos to all those parents of 8th grade girls that have spent the last 6 weeks looking for “The Dress”. The idea of finding the perfect dress by far outweighed the actual hunt experience. That infamous day is almost here and I have come to realize my calling. After 8 hours at the Mall of America and placing two different website orders we settled for a dress that would work, only to head to the fabric store the next week to start all over. We found some fabric and drafted a pattern to create a dress Maddy would feel confident and comfortable wearing. After talking with many of the girls and their parents, so many had the same experience and settled for a dress that was “okay”. The dresses available to these girls are too short, too tight, too skimpy and too much black. If the money and time were no issue, I would create a unique and individual dress for each and every girl in the 8th grade. Thank heavens prom is 3 years away!

T-shirt Design

One of my favorite things to do is to use my design background when creating t-shirt designs for groups and organizations.  This is favorite created for our children's USA Swimming club.  

Custom Flower Girl Dresses

While I no longer created custom bridesmaid or wedding gowns, I will from time to time take on custom flower girl dresses.  For this bride four custom Flower Girl dresses were created in bright coral taffeta and satin for a fall wedding. Dresses were created to fit each girls personality and body style.  Can't wait to see the formal group pictures.

Lemonade stand

Our 10 year old decided she wanted to create a lemonade stand for our garage sale.  She painted an appliance box we picked up from the local furniture store and then had fun with her cricut  decorating it.  

8th grade party dress

A client contracted me to remake her 8th grade party dress to fit her daughter 20 years later for her 8th grade party.  Very fun!

 The remake 20 years later.

The original.  

Stockings

A fun project creating custom stockings, embroidered with their names for a client.

Tree skirt

Creating three custom tree skirts for VERMEER Manufacturing was the goal.  The skirts measured just over 96" and were made of velveteen, satin and white fur.  

T-shirt design

Creating t-shirt designs for local clubs and organizations gives me a chance to use my art and design background as well apply my knowledge of apparel and textiles and design. 

Guest House of Barn Boards

A friend posted this on their Facebook.  How inspired my husband is to recreate.  Wish we knew where the original picture came from.  

Taken from Carter's Country Outdoor Stores Facebook Page.

T-shirt Design

It's that time again to create the Annual 8th Grade Party t-shirt. Wordle was used as the inspiration to create this t-shirt design.  It became alive with all 180+ students names.  Note: Wordle only allows you to use up to approximately 80-100 words.  Additional words and names were placed using post it glue while cutting and pasting.  A-Team Apparel out of Prairie City, IA polished up the layout, created the vector art, screen printed the shirts and sponsored the annual party.  A big thanks goes out to them for all their hard work in creating such a fun shirt and for generously sponsoring the 8th Grade Party!

Pella Swim Club - Team Poster

Our local USA Swim Club wanted to have team posters made.  The cost to have them printed locally was going to cost us $10/poster - cost prohibited.  I began searching for on-line resources.  Vistaprint was discovered.  

Wow what a great job they did - 50 posters for $56.  

MSPublisher was used to create the layout, the design was then uploaded and with-in two weeks we had posters to distribute to local businesses that supported the club.  

Greater Iowa Swim League State T-shirts

This year Pella Swim Team will be hosting the Greater Iowa Swim League State Swim meet with Grinnell.  Creating a design for the event was on the agenda.  Wordle was recently discovered.  Using Wordle has proven to be a super fun, creative way to use words with color.  The design below was used using the Wordle.Net website. 

The shirts were printed by Graphx2atee owned by Sportspage.

Pella Swim Club - Team Logo

Pella Swim Club received their USA Swimming Charter in March of 2011.  This fall a logo for the club was created.  Below is the final rendition.  It will be used on all official club documents including but not limited to caps and shirts as much as possible.  

2 color logo on red caps

2 color logo on white

Single color logo on white

Step Stool

My husband and I made step stools for all the nieces and nephews one year for Christmas.  Each one was individually painted with something unique.  He cut out and assembled the stools and I painted them.

* The original blue prints my husband created have been misplaced.  Hoping to find them so we can upload the plans for others to use.  The inspiration for the painting was taken from a piece of wrapping paper.

A matching pillowcase

Over the last few years I have taught a number of 4-H youth and my art students how to make their own pillowcases using this pattern I found on the internet.

http://www.mormonchic.com/crafty/pillowcases.asp

Most recently I made a pillowcase to match a graduation T-shirt quilt made for a client.

Graduation T-shirt Quilt

A Graduation T-shirt quilt made for a young man from 18 t-shirt pieces.

I make quilts for clients all over the US.  Contact me for details.
Approximate finished size 96"x104".

Graduation T-shirt Quilt

Another Graduation Quilt made from 18 t-shirt pieces.

Homemade rosettes for a strap

This bride wanted a single shoulder strap added to her strapless wedding gown.  Left over fabric from alterations was used to create the roses and embellishment. The end result.

Bridal Gown = 1st Eucharist Dress

Our daughter Callista celebrated her 1st Eucharist this April.  Three years ago I approached our oldest daughter to see if she would like a First Communion dress created for her from my wedding gown.  She did not want any lace and so I waited.  This year when our youngest celebrated her sacrament, she embraced the idea of having a dress created out of the dress her mom married her dad in.

The project started with sketches.  Once the design was clear the original wedding gown  dress needed to be  disassembled.  The original wedding gown was one I designed and created 19 years ago.  A basic dress pattern was found, then a new the designed dress was sloped from the basic pattern.  The sleeves were made fuller, darts and ribbon accents were added to the bodice.  The skirt was box pleated instead of gathered and  lining was added to the skirt so no slip was needed.

The finished dress is more beautiful then I could have imagined.  If you attend the Iowa State Fair this year please visit the Fabric and Threads exhibits to see the dress on display.