Straw Hats and Frog Pee

Rebecca’s hat

Embroidered straw hats seem to be turning up everywhere–at the beach, in the park, even at church.  Stitching them must be tricky, I thought.

But while shopping, I spotted two nice hats marked way down and thought, why not try?  If I ruin  them, the loss is small.  If they finish nicely–well, great!  Our daughter would like one.  She always wears a big hat when she hits the beach with the children and they go very often.   So with two hats taking up room  in my crowded sewing room, I thought it was time to have a go at it.

The monogram is from Loralie’s Loralesque collection.

Just an hour or two before Rebecca arrived with her two children and her good friend Zahra with her two, I decided the time had come.  (Remember Dr. Suess’s Marvin K Mooney?  “The time has come, the time is now, just go go go. I don’t care how.”  I read that book  at least 500 times to my son and can quote most of it verbatim even now.)

I recalled that there was a tutorial at Embroidery Library about embroidering on straw hats.  It’s a GREAT tute.  After reading through the comprehensive instructions, the hats met my Brother Dream Machine which performed flawlessly.  In a very short while, I had a hat ready for each of the young mothers.

Zahra’s monogrammed hat

Selecting a suitable design is very important.  I was happy with Rebecca’s Loralesque “C” but didn’t want Zahra’shat to have the same font.  They’re just too old for the Bobbsey Twins look.   The heavy satin stitching, for which I used only one color instead of the two indicated, was a poor choice.  Even with water soluble stabilizer over the area, the straw points refused to be flattened by the embroidery stitches.

I cannot recall who designed the K. Several other elements were deleted and the flower from Loralesque was added.  The spot on top is a raindrop that lingered on the passion vine on the  trellis.  It dried before they arrived and left no spot.

Both young mothers were very pleased with their hats.  And I know how to embroider these things. Now, if I can just find more on clearance.

NANA FUN–FROG PEE

The mamas took the children to a photographer for an impromptu photo shoot.  7 yo Alastair and 7 yo Aliya have been playing together since before they could crawl.  So there is a lot of history between the two families.

Disregarding the expected pairing by age, the children teamed up by gender.  The 5 and 7 yo boys were a squad while 7 yo and 3 yo girls made up the other duo.

All four children had all been swimming when the girls decided to hunt for the suddenly (wisely) elusive cats.  While they were out and about, the boys spotted something at the opposite end of the pool.  I mentioned that it might be the  tiny frog who considers this body  of water to be his legal residence.  But instead, it was a stick and not the frog.  That caught the boys’  interest.

Inquisitive 5 yo Kaden asked. “Does that frog pee in the pool?”

“Probably,” I replied.

The boys instantly chanted, “Frog pee!  Frog pee!  We’re swimming in frog pee!”

The girls gave up the cat hunt, returned to the pool and 3 yo Vivian Rose jumped in the water.  The boys immediately chanted, “Frog pee!  Frog pee!  Vivi, you’re swimming in frog pee!”

Undaunted, Vivian ducked under the surface, took a mouthful of pool water and spit it in her brother’s face.  “Frog pee!”  she hollered, then swam away.

The boys will have to work a lot harder to gross out this tough little miss.  And we thought she would be prissy.