When Lullaby Island was released people fell in love with the artwork drawn by the very wonderful and talented Jasmine Ojeda. I promised I would make onesies. I started researching and quickly became overwhelmed and frustrated by the cost of organic onesies and this little project was put on a back burner (a very crowded part of the stove these days). Anyway, the last week has found me convalescing from a minor surgery and taking a couple of weeks off teaching singing. Needless to say once my husband got me set up on the sofa with a laptop (I think to slow down the calls for cups of tea from the bedroom) I was able to spend many hours on the internet! Those hours of couch and internet surfing were not in vain this time and I found some organic cotton onesies AND a wonderful little company to print the design onto cotton for me. The onesies came first, beautiful, soft, thick and made in the U.S.A, then came my fabric with many little 4 " squares of the CD cover all over it. Thrilling. I washed the fabric first to make sure it didn't run or shrink, and ironed and cut out each square with pinking shears to prevent fraying. Then I folded over each square and ironed the edges down so that they would be hemmed once on the onsies. At this point I was still full of excitement, letting my mind race ahead with all manner of things I could sew the artwork onto to make gift baskets. I carefully centered each square, tacked the corners, tried out some test strips of fabric to figure out which size of zig zag stitch was going to work the best and got sewing. No matter how carefully or slowly I stitched the fabric would always gather...just once...right at the last corner. I tried tacking more, starting in different places, ironing more, changing my stitch size and three onsies down the line they are not getting any better... this was very frustrating....and now I had missed my window and it was time to clean up and cook dinner. I made the mistake of leaving the sewing machine on the table and it glared at me defiantly throughout my meal.
The next day back on the sofa with my laptop I called up the google gods to show me how to stop the tshirt material from bunching up ....I clicked on a You Tube link...a shaft of light burst through the living room window and there was the answer. I needed to use fusible backing and iron the patch in place before I started to sew. It worked, like a charm. I was so happy, and the word I taught my 7 yr old that day was perseverance! Sadly I think I also taught him once or two others when it wasn't quite working out, but perseverence is the one I'm hanging on to!!
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