Hello Everybody,

I haven’t posted for a while because my recent sewing projects have been showcased in Curly Tale Books for the whole of the month June, giving me (and my sore fingers) a rest for a few weeks.  Above is a photo of this children’s bookshop that also sells toys and gifts, home decor, greeting cards and lots more.  I was given a little table in the centre of one area of the bookshop for my display and had just enough to put on it. I had to put a fabric covered box and a small easel in the centre to prop up the items that were not free standing.

It’s been a good exercise. I have learned a lot about display and pricing and adding decorative tags; what to do and what’s best not to do. Only a few days to go now until the end of June and then I will be thinking through what I have done and plan to do next. There is a local craft fair coming up in November and it is my plan to have a table there. It will be my first craft fair but I feel I need these two testings of the market before I consider opening a shop on Etsy or Folksy, or, alternatively, decide to just go on making things to give away to family members. I have other plans too, more arty plans that move away from patchwork towards fabric painting and fabric manipulation; fabric pictures rather than fabric objects. I’ll see how it goes.

I know I have sold a row of houses and some brooches, people have taken my business cards, I have had many more views on my Facebook page (here’s the link: https://www.facebook.com/forestmoorcrafts)  and I have had some lovely comments. It’s clear that there are people that love this sort of thing and those that don’t much like the hand made look (and how much it costs) and I can quite understand that. The main thing is that there are some people that love it and that’s good enough for me.

Having my work in a shop for whole month has been a much appreciated opportunity for me and it was never about what I could sell as much as about getting ‘out there’ and learning from it. The feeling of being exposed and judged has been more stressful than I imagined but as I get more accomplished and gain confidence in what I make, I hope that feeling will disappear.

I really love my business cards.They are tiny, just 2 3/4 inches  by 1 inch (approx 7cms x 2 3/4 cms). I got them from https://www.moo.com and they show snippets of my work on one side and details of how to contact me on the other. It’s been easy to punch a hole in some and attach them to my work, sometimes with care instructions behind on a strip of paper the same size as the business card.

 

After my last post I worked on my house theme a little more, appliqueing a series of houses onto pillowcases.  I went for three styles in different coloured florals.

Two designs went up and down the housewife’s end and the third went across it. The difficulty I had with the larger houses was keeping the them straight. Even though I pinned them they moved while I was sewing them on. I don’t like to use too many pins as they often leave marks but I need to think of a way to get around this problem.

I also finished the two ‘Tiny Dancer ‘log cabin blocks that I started a while ago. They are intended as a pair of unframed fabric pictures, so the wadding between them is thinner than usual. I did press them when I finished but wish I hadn’t because I preferred the all over puckering that they had previously.

I get nervous about the quilting stage and often put it off for while and yet I always end up enjoying that the most, once I have decided how I am going to tackle it.

One ‘Tiny Dancer’ block was meant to be the reverse of the other but when I came to quilting the second block (above left)  the ‘logs’ on one of the pale sides were shorter.  This was because although the pattern of the fabric was reversed the initial log pattern was not. This meant that the quilting design I had done on the first block would have overlapped each other at the edges on the second. I had to quilt over the patterned area of the block and, as a result, the quilting doesn’t show up as I had wanted it to. Lesson learned: Two blocks that are intended to complement each other as a pair should be planned and considered at each stage as a pair and not as two individual blocks that are set together afterwards.

This is what the back of each block looks like It’s interesting how some quilting patterns lend themselves to tidy backs while others don’t. The little cross stitch in the centre of each block make a pair of random lines on the back that I don’t care for . However, I felt it was important to secure the middle of the block to the background in some way as it is much larger than any of the logs. It was hard to come up with something the would not distract from the dancer or make the whole thing too fussy.

I have only a few days left in the shop but have decided, even at this late stage, to introduce some houses for children which I am hoping to finish over this weekend. I have chosen some fun fabric

from Moda for one set of houses that I think some little girls would enjoy and I have also begun a series of  as yet unfinished  houses from Makower’s ‘Little Monsters’ fabric range .

These are made in the same way as my other sets of houses, fabric wrapped shapes that are sewn together in my usual accordion style. I have gone for several differently shaped houses in rows of threes and fours.

I find that the shape of a roof can be tricky. I used to wrap the roof fabric around the the house shape and secure it inside but having a house shape at the back and the front, with a roof wrapped around each, meant I was joining four thicknesses of fabric. With these houses I have appliqued the roof shape onto the front of the house with a less bulky result.

So that’s it for now. Looking ahead into July I want to try out some American Schoolhouse designs as I’ve wanted to do some for so long and I have found a new way to interpret a log cabin block that gives some quirky results. Then I think it might be time for a  crib size quilt or maybe some painted and/or embroidered houses, or….

Until next time….