Give him wings

Apparently, there is a tradition among pilots in the Air Force. Whenever a pilot has a boy baby (well, maybe they include girls now too), the baby is decked out in a miniature flight suit, complete with a patch with wings and "Baby XXXX", where XXXX is the father's (well, ok, it could be the mother's as well) call sign.

Cute.

A coworker's son-in-law is a pilot, and her daughter is due to deliver their baby boy near the end of this month. There isn't exactly a booming business in infant flight suits, so Jane is making one for her grandson. But what to do about the patch?

Enter the coworker with the embroidery machine. I was able to find the embroidery pattern for pilot's wings (and they are supposed to be specifically Air Force wings according to the description, and what I can find bears that out). The only catch was finding an alphabet small enough, or one that could be downsized without losing integrity, that would look in harmony with the wings.

The embroidery is done. There are still a few errant threads to carefully clip but I'm happy overall. Jane will have to decide how she wants to attach it. I'd trim it on the lines I've drawn, then satin stitch it to the little flight suit. Up to her.

So...I give you...Baby Goat.

It's a privilege to be able to help our our Armed Forces, even in something as insignificant as this. This is pretty much the niche I want for the future long arm quilting & embroidery business: specialized, small batch projects. If I had more time, I'd have figured out at way to do a satin stitch edging around the embroidery, AND made it iron on. In fact, I do have a couple of ideas I'd like to play with. Hopefully, I can figure out exactly how to do it, as I've told Jane to tell her son-in-law I'd be happy to make these to order for any more of his pilot friends who need them.