Before and After

I have a ton of partly-written posts, which either need more words, the right words, or a few pictures to finish them off.

But this is ready now, so here it is.

One last Christmas stocking.  The materials (baby's first Christmas onesie, baby stocking and other holiday gear) were sent to me by the mom a few weeks after Christmas.  She wanted to deal with getting her daughter's stocking made now, before she packed away the baby stuff and lost her nerve about letting someone cut it up.

I was able to incorporate fabric from every piece of clothing (except the ruffled skirt on the dress, which is being held until later, because she wants to order a doll with a fluffy skirt), and got to use my embroidery machine to do the name.  Have I mentioned that I love that machine I never thought I would want?  The same way I love my serger that I never wanted.  You never know until you try, I guess.

More new stuff soon, I promise.

Off season

Way, way off season.

I got contacted about a month ago by someone who was interested in getting a custom Christmas stocking for her baby.  (I guess it's a good thing I hadn't gotten around to taking down all the Christmas listings yet).

We went back and forth a little on the design, and she ended up sending me four of her son's Christmas onesies.

My favorite part: the Santa head at the top was actually one of the feet.  Little Santa head feet.  Sometimes baby stuff is so cute it's almost toxic.

And at least I know there's one customer who won't contact me on December 15, looking for a stocking to hang up on Christmas Eve.

Patchwork Christmas

I sent out a set of custom Christmas stockings the other day -- two were ones already finished and listed in my Etsy shop, and the other three were cut from a log cabin quilt I got online.

I love finding "cutter" quilts on Ebay -- since they're already damaged, I don't feel any guilt at all cutting them up and making them into something else; at least the undamaged parts get re-used this way.

The buyer, a wife and mother of three, asked if I could put names on the stockings, so I embroidered them on pieces of white linen and then hand-stitched the name tags on.  Three of the stockings were made to order, so I could have embroidered the names straight on, but the other two, being already constructed, would have been a lot harder to embroider, and I also liked the contrast of the white tag -- it would have been really hard to see the embroidery (or choose one color) against the different prints and colors of the log cabin quilt especially.

I still have a lot of the log cabin quilt left.  It may be stockings or it may be bears.  Or it may be a little of each.

And because I can't resist a bargain, I found another quilt on Ebay over the holiday weekend and it's in the hands of the USPS as I type this.

It’s beginning to look a lot like . . . Christmas?

Yes, already.

One of the stores I deal with in Philadelphia was kind enough to let me know far in advance that she wanted about 20 Christmas stockings for the holiday season. I sent her links to the stockings I had in the Etsy shop last year, and she really liked the vintage quilt ones.

Thankfully I recently scored another damaged quilt on Ebay, so I was set there. She and I talked about embellishment on the stockings, and while she liked the “Joy” ones I did last year, she asked if I could do something to resemble the LOVE statue in Philadelphia – she said that everything in the shop with that logo practically sold itself. Merchandise that sells itself? I’m so there.

I played with fonts on the work computer one day and enlarged them until I got a good size for a stocking embellishment, then I traced it onto cardstock and cut it out like a stencil.

I got exactly 20 stocking fronts out of the quilt before it turned into scraps for bear construction. The back of the stockings are red denim (don’t tell Mario that it’s the denim for the jeans I keep promising to make for him), and I used the scraps to cut out the stenciled letters.

Originally I was going to do L, V and E in red, and use random fabrics for the O (making it look like a Christmas ornament), but that turned into way too much trouble so thankfully there was enough red denim left to cut out the O. (But nowhere near enough to make those red jeans someone wanted after seeing them on our last two European vacations. Oops. Bad wife).

It'll be here before we know it

Christmas in July, Literally

It's been nearly 100 degrees in my workroom for the last few days, which has led to very little actual work being done.  I'll go in early in the morning, cut a few things out or sew a few quick seams and then have to retreat to a cooler place to recover.  There's been way more recovering, and water drinking, than there has sewing.

I had a few stockings left over from last year's holiday sale, and when I found them (while digging for something else entirely) I decided I should put them up in the shop since I'm having that Christmas in July sale.

Besides, looking at them makes me feel a little bit cooler.

Getting a jump on Christmas

I know, logical, isn't it?  Just as spring finally reaches the East Coast, I'm working on some holiday items.

And it's not like I don't have a show on May 10th, and another one on June 15th, but yesterday it began to bother me that I was getting a bit behind with a particular project, so I put some hours into it yesterday and today.

I made some Christmas stockings last year for a local show, and they did okay.  I made one other stocking, which was a bit more labor intensive - and would never have sold at the local show because I would have had to price it accordingly.  I decided to send it to a friend and fellow blogger, who had hosted me at a workshop at her farm in October.

When she showed it on her blog, it was a total surprise to me.  The reaction it got was also a total surprise, and led me to approach her after the holidays with the idea of running a holiday ad on her blog  next year, featuring - you guessed it - that stocking.  Which, if it's being sold to people who understand, and if I get started in time and can do a little bit of assembly line work, won't be quite so labor intensive.

It's those one-off, prototype projects that really slow you down, but sometimes the best work comes out of them.

So right now my sewing table is covered in scraps of plaid flannel, and there are 30 stockings cut out, with linings, waiting to be embellished.  I feel a little better now, especially since I'm starting a project to deal with all those flannel scraps, and those can be made up for sale at the upcoming shows.

It all works out in the end.  Right?