What I Made This Week: The First Mocknecks, 95 Pieces of Bears and Ten Words for Mom
The first mockneck went out this week, and it was a bride's.
Navy, oversized, with MRS across the front and her new last name underneath in a blue antique damask fabric. I had just added mocknecks to what I offer — I put them up on Instagram on Tuesday thinking they'd be a school spirit thing, because that is what everyone is asking for right now. Then two orders came in the same week and neither one was for a school. One was that MRS sweatshirt. The other was a NICU nurse, also navy, with baby feet cut from a hospital swaddle blanket.
That is usually how it goes here. I bring something in for one reason and my customers immediately find a better one.
All told it was 158 orders, 218 pieces, 58 different designs. Here is where it all went.
School spirit wear: 95 pieces, four schools
The Bears fundraiser is still the biggest block of my week — 95 pieces across eleven different products, going to four schools in one district. The two appliqué crewnecks carried it: 24 with the Bears script and 23 of the woodland brown gingham pennant. Then 15 varsity B graphic tees, nine teacher fleece jackets in black, seven vintage stripe tees, seven embroidered full-zip hoodies, six of the bear-in-sunglasses tees, a couple of polos, a performance tee and one wheat trucker hat.
Everything gets boxed up by style so the school can hand it out without sorting through a pile. That part matters more than people think.
If you run a PTA or coach a team, I talked through how my fundraisers work this week too. One district here raised $2,390 in sixteen days. You can collect the orders yourself, or I set the sale up on my site and families order and pay online. Either way you get free mockups of your logo first. My finished school work lives in School Spirit.
Wedding dresses: 35 pieces, and one scrunchie
Fifteen BRIDE sweatshirts, each one with a bride's new last name. Seven bouquet appliqués. Seven MRS sweatshirts in the sage chinoiserie and the other florals, plus a handful of one-offs — a mother of the bride, a floral bride, a white lace keepsake. Spruce green, orchid, pepper, blue jean, cherry blossom, woodland brown. A good few of the dates embroidered on sleeves this week were 2027, which means brides are booking me a year and a half out now.
The smallest thing I made all week was a single hair scrunchie out of lace cut off the bottom of a dress. She sent the lace and apologised in case it wasn't enough. It was.
That is the thing I most want people to know: I don't need much. If you are nervous about cutting your gown, you can send me the hem, the alteration scraps, the piece nobody will ever see again. Wedding & Bride has the BRIDE keepsake and the MRS sweatshirt in it.
Baby clothes: 29 pieces, ten different words
Sixteen keepsake sweatshirts made from baby clothes this week, and I love looking back at what people chose to put on them. Mama. Mom. Dad. Dada. Papá. Nana. Nanny. Titi. Auntie. Grandpa. Ten different words for the person holding the baby, all cut from the same kind of tiny worn-out outfit.
Alongside those: six keepsake caps, two curved MAMA swaddle sweatshirts, two NICU preemie sweatshirts for a mom and a dad, a three-heart appliqué, a curved name with an est. year, and one baby clothes quilt backed in olive green minky. The quilt is the one I think about afterwards — a whole drawer of outgrown clothes turned into something that goes on a bed.
Those all live in Memory Keepsakes.
Nurses: 32 pieces, fifteen designs
Mostly quarter-zips and full-zips again, made from the hospital swaddle blankets these nurses actually work with. What always gets me is the range of departments. This week: NICU, labor and delivery, mother-baby, OB tech, midwife and OBGYN, maternal fetal medicine, respiratory therapy, surgical technology, a physician assistant, an emergency department. RN, BSN, MSN, CNA, CST, RRT, RNC-OB. I learn a new set of letters most weeks.
Nine of the 32 were NICU jackets alone. Everything in that line is in Nurse Embroidered Sweatshirts and Tshirts.
Fall, and the first Christmas tree
Five seasonal pieces. Three orange sequin SPOOKY bat crewnecks, one pumpkin season plaid, and the first Christmas tree sweatshirt of the year. It is October. Here we go. Holiday & Seasonal is filling up.
The small stuff
Then all the little additions that don't show up in a product count but take up real time at the machine: names and dates embroidered down sleeves, appliquéd hearts on wrists, a set of side bows, three rush orders, two sweatshirt colour upgrades, a weighted blanket going up four pounds, and a couple of SVG downloads. Those are in Add-Ons & Upgrades if you want to add one to an order.
How to order
Everything here is made to order by me. Pick the piece you want from Embroidered Shirts and Sweatshirts or one of the collections above, choose your garment colour and size, and tell me in the notes what you want embroidered — the name, the word, the thread colour, whether you want a heart on the sleeve.
If you are sending me fabric — a wedding dress remnant, a hospital swaddle blanket, a bag of baby clothes — order the listing first and I will send you where to mail it. About a 7" x 15" piece is all I need for a keepsake, so your dress stays whole.
I post the work as I go over on Instagram @bbiad, including the pieces that never make it onto a listing. Come watch.