Sewing as a job

When I took a leave from teaching, sewing for public consumption wasn’t really on my radar. It took the first year for it to slowly rise to the top of the idea pile after I made quite a few quilts for family members. I knew I had to find an outlet for the finished products and future ideas that were piling up. When I started selling my sewn items, I generally got one of two responses. One was, “Lucky! I wish I could stay home and play all day, too.” The other was, “There’s no way I’d be able to sew that much. Too boring.” Well, both comments are right on the mark. Some days I love it, and some days I don’t. When I’m working on items, I can easily spend 8 hours ironing, cutting, or sewing. Time flies and nothing else gets done. On the days I’m not sewing, I’m looking for ideas for the next project, or for new color combinations to try, or tidying up my sewing room (though not often enough!). I know I’m lucky to be able to work on my passion project this early in life. I don’t take that for granted. It’s fun to make things people want or need. It’s rewarding to make quilts or pillows to honor and remember loved ones or special memories. It’s great to have repeat customers who send me ideas of things they want made, and I love the confidence they have that I can make it. My sewing job doesn’t pay the bills, but it does earn enough to keep buying fabric. It’s easy to fit into my part-time job schedule, and it’s flexible enough to take trips to see our grandkids. And, it keeps me out of trouble!

Taking My Creativity Seriously

As I drove home from CO, some of my time was spent listening to podcasts. One podcast I listen to regularly is “Elise Gets Crafty”.  I love her insights into crafting as a business, not just a hobby. I listened to an episode titled “Taking Creative Work Seriously”.  

She asks the question “Are you taking your creativity seriously?” and talked about how to decide if you’re crafting as a hobby or as a business.  (I’m paraphrasing, so if you want the exact quotes, check out her podcast, episode 45.)  A hobbyist generally is making one item at a time, not caring how long the process takes, and is making the item for their own use or as a gift for someone else. A business crafter is making multiple items, needs to make them in a time and cost efficient manner, and is looking to create an income by selling the items.  A business crafter also has to craft whether they’re in the mood to or not. It’s work. 

If you are a business crafter (I am), you also need to be good at self-promotion (I’m not!).   Ack. Not an easy thing to do!  The gist of her beliefs is that if you don’t toot your own horn, who will? Good question, I guess. She goes on to discuss ways to make your business more open with its current and future customers by sharing parts of your craft with them. I’ve been comfortable with posting pictures on facebook or instagram of what I’m working on, but I’m going to go out of my comfort zone and post a blog entry once a week in an attempt to share some portion of what I do. It might be an informative post or just a picture of what’s on my worktable.  If you have an idea for me to post about, let me know.

Thanks for letting me work on my self-promotion skills!

got scraps?

A year's worth of sewing has left me with a lot of scraps. Typically after a project, I put larger (10x10" pieces or bigger) pieces of fabric back into my color bins. Smaller pieces get put into a plastic box and forgotten. When I was cleaning and rearranging my sewing room a few weeks ago, I noticed that the bin was so full of scraps that I couldn't even shut the cover. So, I had no choice, but to tackle the scrap bin. My first thought was to toss it all in the garbage, but I just can't do that. :)

I ironed all the scraps (the only ironing I do!), and then started cutting them into useable squares. I prefer 5", 4", 3", 2 1/2". I also cut a lot of 2 3/4" square for making hexagons. I always start with the largest square possible and work down. Anything 1"-2 1/4" becomes a strip.

It took 2 1/2 days of ironing and cutting to clean out the bin. Now, the fun part! I plan to make scrap quilts alternating color and white scraps with the squares. The strips will become either a strip quilt (like I made with my last go-round of scrap cutting) or a crazy quilt. 

I decided to try the crazy quilt idea. I sewed strips together until I had a large enough piece to cut out an 8 1/2" square. I plan to put sashing between the squares when I put the quilt top together. Warning - these are highly addictive! I was just going to make one and put the strips away until another day. Ten squares later, I'm still going.

I always think the blocks are ugly to start with, but once they're put together, I like the finished project made out of "free" fabric. (I know, not really free, but it makes me feel frugal to use my scraps to make something useable.)

Another way I use my scraps is in hexagon projects. The scraps I cut this time will become my newest travel project. Hexies are sewn by hand, so they are great for traveling. I have many cut out ready to take with me when I head to AZ and CO. I'll sew them into "flower" sets and then spend time in the car this summer sewing the sets together into a quilt top. 

So, do you have scraps? What do you make with them?

Fabric paper towels

For the past few years, I have been trying to eliminate some of the paper products we buy and use. A few years ago, I made a basketful of cloth napkins with the hopes of not buying any more napkins. With the exception of cute napkins for the grandkids' birthday celebrations, we've done a good job at using the cloth napkins. They add very little to the laundry load and remarkably haven't gotten as stained as I thought they might. So, I decided the next step was to buy fewer paper towels. (I know that I'll still buy paper towels, but hopefully in a much smaller quantity.) I wash my hands a lot during the day, and I don't love having a damp dishtowel sitting around, especially since you never know what else has been wiped up with it since I last used it. I'd seen several blogposts about fabric paper towels, complete with snaps on the corners to put them together and roll them up. I didn't really want to add "snap towels together" to my daily to-do list, so I eliminated that step. I decided they could share a basket on the counter with my dish rags. I used waffle weave cotton fabric and white flour sack towel fabric on the back of pretty fabrics. I made a dozen and will see how quickly I use them up in a day. I also will see which backing fabric I like best.

An Enjoyable Afternoon

We've had Amazon Prime for about two years, but I just jumped on instant video bandwagon. I've watched three movies in the past two days, all while sewing binding on Valentine's Day items. Today I watched The Sum of All Fears and enjoyed every stitch. 

Stash building

I've been surprised at how quickly the bowl potholders sell out. (I shouldn't be - they're pretty handy to have in the kitchen.) I'm almost out of them again, so I thought I'd better build up another stash of them. They're putzy to make, but when I do a lot of them at a time, it goes pretty quickly. Yesterday I ironed fabrics, today I cut fabric and batting squares, this evening I marked the batting (sewing lines/darts) and pinned them all together. Tomorrow I'll sew the quilting lines and darts, and then get them pinned together and sewn. Hopefully tomorrow night I'll be turning them inside out and pinning the opening closed. Then, I can finish the stack on Tuesday. 

Ready to sew!

The week after Christmas is usually when I'm hit with the cleaning and organizing bug. This year, it was my fabric stash and craft room shelves that were my target.

For the past few years, my fabric has been kept in plastic bins in my front closet, lovingly referred to as "the quilt store". That meant that coats and boots were left to roam our great room, usually just being thrown over a couch back or stair railing or left on the rug to trip over. But, they roam no longer. Our front closet now holds coats and boots. Well, mine anyway. Ron still leaves his boots out, where I trip on them (4-5 pair at a time) on a daily basis, but I don't suspect that'll change anytime soon.

I knew I wanted to keep my fabric stash sorted by color and/or category (fall, Christmas, reproduction/vintage looking, baby). After pricing bins to fit my Ikea shelves, I decided to look for fabric bin tutorials online. I found a few smaller bin patterns and used them as a guide to make bins that were roughly 12" square. After several days of non-stop cutting, sewing, folding, and organizing, my shelves are filled with my fabric stash. No more going to "the quilt store" to look for fabrics (which were always in the bottom row of bins). Now, I can pull out just one bin of fabric at a time in the comfort of my sewing room.  Here's the finished product:

I definitely gravitate towards blue fabrics when I'm shopping. It took four bins to hold it all. Everything else fit pretty nicely into one bin each. It was also nice to have a place to put not red/not pink fabrics. The two bottom left wire baskets hold backing fabrics or fabric sets that are going to be used together. The wicker basket holds a variety of ziploc bags that get used over and over to hold projects together after cutting, but before sewing. It also holds a surge protector cord in place. Usually my ironing table is sitting in front of this shelf, and my iron is plugged into the surge protector.  :) I'm glad to be finished with this job!