A wonderful day and now I have a Shop!!

I spent the morning this morning picking organic strawberries at an orchard near where I grew up, actually it was the orchard I went to in kindergarten (1979!!!) to pick apples at. It was a lot of fun and my lovely Daughter had a blast. They had gorgeous strawberries and it was a lovely 3/4 of a mile walk to get there and we got to see all the lovely peach, pear and apple trees with their tiny, yet recognizable fruit. It was so fun to show them too her and talk about the seasons of growing things. I know a lot of it went over her head, but she is excited about coming back and was soooo careful about touching their "baby fruit". It inspired me to finally get around to making another "flower child" for my nature table. I am so going to make a strawberry boy and or girl! I might even make one for my shop, speaking of which.....

Tonight I FINALLY began to upload some of the things I have made for sale on my shop!!! I am excited and nervous at the same time. I love making things and am hoping this helps me to fund more of my crafts. The more I poke around the etsy site (which is where my shop is located)the more I worry that no one will look at my store, some of the stuff for sale there is AMAZING. It is fun to poke around though as I always see something that inspires me, I look at blogs for the same reason. So now I am off to upload more things and then to start my little fruit children.

Here is the link to my shop in case you were curious, let me know what you think, I am a little nervous about it. http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5202116

Mistakes

I cut out 3 pairs of pants the other day, got lazy and stacked the fabric. This is an efficient way to cut out patterns for me and I do it often. However by the time I got to the second pair I had bought new fabric and wanted to experiment. But I plowed through and finished, they came out cute and are awaiting snaps.

Excited that I could now move on I whipped up a sweet pillowcase style dress (LOVE making these) in the cutest white fabric with musical notes all over it. I made it with black straps and am having a hard time not giving it to my Daughter as I made it to sell. Happily I moved onto the other fabric I got, really cute pirate print on a taupe background. This is where the mistake comes in. I cut the armholes upside-down. I was hot and distracted and stopped paying attention even though I had reminded myself when I sat down to pay attention when I cut the armholes. grrr, so I put it away for a little not wanting to face the fact that I had ruined 2/3 of a yard of fabric.

I eventually came back to it not wanting to admit defeat and I ended up sewing what I had cut away from the end to even up where the armholes had been into a long ruffle and sewed that onto the bottom and proceeded. It came out LOVELY! I am so pleased with it, the ruffles adds just the sweetest touch and because I know there are mistakes in it I don't feel right selling it and now I can happily give it to my daughter guilt free!!! I am so pleased with how it came out that I am starting a ruffled dress with the cutest orange fabric dotted with 2 inch long chili peppers! Generally I am not a fan of ruffles, I find them annoying to make but the effect is so nice I might even get over that.

New Dress

I was on my own tonight so I thought I'd play around with some cute patriotic fabric I bought. I dug through my sewing box, found some big red rickrack and some double fold binding tape in the same shade of red and set to sewing. This was my end result! So cute!! I was thinking of either selling it on my "one of these days ESTY shop" or giving it to my daughter. This is why I never have anything to sell in this "mythical shop" as well as why my daughter has too many clothes. I am quite happy with it. It's made in the style of a "pillow-case dress" but with a modified neck. I have always seen them with a draw-string kind of neck gathering and that always made me nervous, this way is much better. Now mind you I have actually made one of these out of an actual pillow case but have made more of them out of fabric. This one might be my favorite yet. I love the ruffles along the neck and the blue is actually a bit darker than in the picture. I love dressing my little girl in baggy old-fashioned kinds of dresses, the loose comfortable clothes that allow her to be cool in the summer and let her look her age all year. Everytime she's worn one of these she gets LOADS of compliments and everyone always says, "wish I had one of those" and I always think to my self, on her it's cute and a pillow case dress, on a grownup... it's a muumuu! Let me know what you think.

Ramblings on my makings

Currently I am making a sweet white smocked sweater for my little darling as well as sewing up some sweet overalls from a pattern I made up hoping to open an esty shop one of these days. I made up the pattern because my little sweetie is gifted in the tushie department and she wears cloth diapers (some of which I made her myself) which adds to the girth of her bottom. A lot of the clothing I was finding for her was either too tight across the bottom or too grown up for my tastes. So I started making her some clothes to suit her frame and my tastes. I finally finished tailoring a pattern of overalls for her! Now however I am enjoying whipping up the clothing so much that the poor girl has too many clothes still I feel the itch to sew, hence my plans for a shop.

I also have been known to whip up a few gnomes and fairy's waldorf-style and already the poor child has a basket of little people and creatures that's overflowing. She has a whole bunch of Sally Mavor's "Wee felt folk" http://www.weefolkstudio.com/ as well as a few miscellaneous knitted and felt animals. I have some wonderful Waldorf style toy making books that I find endlessly fascinating as well as inspirational and I am sure I will be making something from them soon. The above picture is of the "daffodil child" and "mother nature" dolls that live on my seasonal table. They were fun to make and as soon as my tubular stockinette arrives I will be making more "flower" children to join them.

I have been slowly stocking up my craft supplies recently because nothing annoys me more than not having the materials I need on hand. I like to be able to make what I want when the mood strikes me, some days I sew, some days I knit and some days I make dolls. I love that my little daughter watches me make these things, watches them come together in my hands. I love that when she gets a gift she assumes that whoever gave it to her made it because so much of what she gets from me "mommy make?"

A beginning

I stumbled upon a homeschooling/waldorf blog some time ago (http://theherbalway.blogspot.com/) I think I was looking for inspiration for my seasonal table at the time. I was fascinated by the things I read and followed a few of the blog links on the side and discovered the wonders of craft blogs. After reading them for some time and very occasionally and shyly commenting I thought I might start my own as a way to encourage myself.
I am a knitter and I sew quite a bit though I am largely self taught in both. I am prone to just picking something up and winging it. I started making various dolls since my daughters birth 2 years ago and my crowning achievement was making "Baby Marie" for my Daughter for Yule this past year. I also make my daughters diapers since cloth diapering can be cost prohibitive when you start out. Making diapers for her launched me into making her clothes because I was having difficulty finding some styles of clothing that would fit her bottom while clad in cloth diapers. Now between the dolls I make her, the clothes I sew her and not to mention the sweaters and dresses I knit her she's got more that she needs lol. But still I just can't seem to stop making things.

Currently I am knitting her a lovely cream colored smock style sweater with some sweet cabling and some seedstitch framed diamonds that will eventually have flowers embroidered on them. It's a lovely, girly sweater and as it's knit on size 3 needles it will take me a while which is why I am making it a size larger than she wears now so she will certainly get a lot of wear out of it. I'll post pictures as I finish it. Above is a picture of her on mother's day this year wearing an orange dress I made her in a cotton modal blend yarn, orange is her favorite color.