Sewing for the Older Boy

My son is going to turn eight years old in a week. EIGHT. This is my baby we're talking about here! He would die of mortification if he knew I referred to him as "my baby" to the world at large, but really, he is.

Sewing for him has gotten more challenging, but I refuse to give up! He outgrew the vast majority of knit prints a couple of years ago, and they just don't make enough prints for the older boy. So, I'm left with solids, stripes and embroidery. Sadly, there just aren't a lot of boyish embroidery designs out there either. My beloved European embroidery sites mostly cater to girly stuff. Urban Threads is probably the best embroidery site there is for designs that would suit an older boy.

So, I have to get creative. Here are my latest attempts (of course I made a set for him and a set for Cobblestone Park.)

This dragon shirt is made of a very soft brown and white striped cotton lycra (a score from my latest San Francisco shopping trip). After I zig zagged the dragon scribble applique onto the shirt, I thought the dragon looked a little lonely. I then spent the next 3 hours trying to find a little, boyish embroidery design to stick in the corner. NOT EASY! If I wanted flowers, hearts, bows, unicorns, etc., my life would be easy. But something boyish? ARGH! I did buy a set of mini-buttons from Janea's World which are fantastic, but I had to wait for her to email them to me after purchase and, well, I have issues with patience!

I finally came across this star freebie from Kunterbunt, and that did the trick nicely. But I still thought the shirt looked like it was missing something. I wanted an element in the lower corner......but what? I finally settled on the small zig zag frame (from Huups) and then I just used a font embedded in my machine to spell the word "dragon" inside.

I showed my son, and asked him what he thought. "AWESOME!" Phew.

Pattern: Ottobre 3/10

Embroidery: Urban Threads (dragon scribble)

This is shirt number 2. I just love how the colors work on this one. The gray stripe is hemp/organic cotton from Bamblue Fabrics. At the rate I'm going through this hemp, I'm not going to have much left to sell! But I just adore it - it's got such great texture, and the colors are fabulous.

Pattern: Ottobre 3/10

Embroidery: Tinimi

This one got an "awesome!" too, I'm happy to report!