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In my last post, I promised I wouldn’t blog again until I could talk about sewing.  And then an entire month went by with no posting.  I’ve been so distracted I haven’t even visited my friends blogs that much.  Sorry.

Oh sure, I’ve been sewing orders for customers.  But nothing new and exciting to report.  So yesterday I finally sat in front of my sewing machine and played.  It should come as no surprise the new item was bath and body related.

This is a silk pouch for a lotion bar…

I’ve had that lotion bar sitting on my nightstand for maybe a month?  Just sitting there on a paper towel so it won’t leave a grease spot.  So I finally whipped up a pouch from recycled silks to house my solid chocolate scented lotion.

Then I needed to make a pouch for my sister in law.  She’ll be getting a lotion bar for her birthday this week.  But her taste runs more to the contemporary fabrics so I made this for her…

Those last 2 pouches had free motion quilting and embroidery on them.  They were sort of time consuming.  So I thought about making lotion bar pouches that were fast and easy but still made of fabric.  A quick jaunt into photoshop with the Digi Dolly legs, some treated muslin to print on, then a few quick stitches on the serger and VOILA!  This was born…

The ingredients are printed onto the back of this fabric pouch.  This one was a private joke between me and the husband.  Since my lotion bar is chocolate scented with lots of cocoa butter, I rub it on my feet at night and exclaim (very excitedly) that I have chocolate feet!  Thus the chocolate feet design was born.  It still makes me giggle when I see it, and then I smell the chocolate again.  Seriously, I want to take a bite of this solid lotion.

And now that I have fulfilled my promise of a sewing post, I will get back to the bath and body stuff that has consumed my time, money and imagination for the past month.  You will be hearing more from me, and it won’t take a month for the next post!  I suspect I will be coming clean to you in the near future.  (cheesy pun intended)

That’s right, another post about soap.  This will be the last one for a while, until I experiment and formulate a few new things.  Oddly enough, me and the husband have started watching that old TV show “Soap” on Netflix.  I really do have soap on the brain.  More photos of my new hobby…    Read more…

I guess you would think that fabric + soap = clean fabric

But it’s never about the obvious things with me, now is it?? Read more…

As per my usual, I keep graphs of the sales statistics that Etsy publishes each month.  Etsy calls this their weather report.  I just update this post each month when Etsy publishes their sales figures.

I somehow missed the new stats published by Etsy on June 11th.  Not sure how I missed the RSS on that one, but here they are a little later than I normally publish the charts.   It looks like May is better than April but not quite recovered.  I see many unhappy people in the Etsy forums complaining that google is not crawling their shops anymore, maybe that’s a factor?  Anyhow, April to June are typically slow in retail.  It’s a good time for a shop makeover and to start working on fresh new items!

Some of the charts don’t show “May” in the legend at the bottom, but I assure you the last dot on the right of each chart is for May 2010.

And as always, here is the link to the spreadsheet where I keep those numbers on google docs if you want to copy and play with them yourself.  All I ask is that you link back to me if you publish what you use.

I have a new obsession these days which is distracting me away from my sewing machines.

So here is a quiz for you…

What looks like chocolate, smells like chocolate, but doesn’t taste like chocolate?

Read more…

I’ve been busy sewing things lately, but I still haven’t photographed the new pants, dresses and shirts I’ve been making.  I need a model and a nice, outdoor setting so I can really do it right.  I dream of beautiful ladies in lush, green landscapes wearing flowy clothing from an entire collection sewn by me.  But yet I wind up with photos that look more like a cheap item strung on a hanger, then carelessly placed on a dark closet door.  More Ebay than Etsy.  I want to change my clothing product photos, but that means taking lots of time to get it right.  Maybe by Christmas my summer clothing will be ready.

In the meantime I’m busy sewing hearts in jars to ship off to my first wholesale customer – a store in Australia which I’m very excited about.  Here are the anatomical and traditional hearts in progress…

I’ve been very obsessed with soapmaking and DIY bath and beauty products lately.  I’ll write about that in a few days.

Before I go, let me share a humorous conundrum I recently solved.  I couldn’t figure out why the herbs seedlings growing indoors were dying off.  They were getting enough sun and water.  Then I found the plant killer in action.

I guess sleeping kittens are not conducive to growing herbs.  Lesson learned.

I received my complimentary advance copy of the Summer 2010 Sew Somerset magazine this week.  Yeeeee Haaaw!   I love all the fabric collage work they feature in this publication that comes out twice per year.

Read more…

I’m hoping my specimen jars will be showing up in the Summer 2010 issues of Sew Somerset very soon.   I thought I should kindly add a few similar items to my shop, in case magazine readers stop by looking for those weird aMEoba artist dolls I created.  So in that spirit, I digitized a few more faces for my embroidery machine.

I then made several more aMEoba artists using the new faces.  These 5 are listed in my Etsy shop and I will have more up soon.  Read more…

It’s been 3 months and 10 days since I took the Dottie Angel challenge of the utmost kind.  My challenge is to avoid retail shopping and stick to used or handmade goods for myself and my home for one year.   This is my progress and the changes it has brought into my life in only 3 months time…

I have not purchased any new clothing for myself, nor have I purchased any new decorative items for the home since my last update.  There were some purchases at the building center so we could make raised beds for a vegetable garden.

We reused kitty litter buckets with the bottoms cut out to plant raspberry and blackberry canes, then painted them black for cosmetic purposes.  The point of this was to protect the plants from the weedwacker, and to finally get rid of those empty kitty litter buckets we knew we would use for something someday!

I’ve been fixing up the bathroom again and finished phase 2 without a single trip to a retail store.  The curtain hides shallow shelves with shampoos and such over the bathtub.  The curtain applique uses vintage fabrics from the thrift shop.  The shelving and paint were things we already had from other projects.  I’ve got one towel ring painted, I’m still looking for 2 more.  Ivy cuttings from an old plant, as well as candles and trinkets found around our house decorate the top shelf.   Nope, nothing new here.  Just old stuff perking up my tiny bath.  (I really thought the curtain would unwrinkle in the steamy bath – it hasn’t.  Oh well, I took the photo anyway)

This challenge has made me think longer and harder about every purchase I make.  It’s not about following the rules and avoiding retail stores, it’s really about thinking who produced the goods that your hard earned dollars are paying for.  Because I’ve been contemplating where my money goes, we have made other purchasing decisions in our household which move us in a more earth friendly and sustainable direction.

The documentaries “Food, Inc.” made us think harder about buying locally made foods.  I really don’t want to support the huge agri-business that provides Americans with food.  Besides our veggies in the backyard, I’m growing herbs and small veggies in my studio.  I had an abundance of pots in the basement, and I machine embroidered plant marker ribbons to label each pot.  They are filling the big windows in my studio.

See those ethereal silk curtains in the window?  It’s reused.  We used lightweight silk as table runners at our wedding a few years back.  I hand dyed the silk, then ripped and seamed it into translucent curtains.  Here they frame a jar of basil with some little china dolls to chat with.  I think that little doll would look better inside with the dirt.

So anyway, the original challenge is not so challenging anymore.  Refraining from new clothes and home dec is becoming 2nd nature after only 3 months.

But the mode of thinking which influences ALL my purchases continues to challenge me.   How can I make every purchase count towards the ideals I believe in?  Does this dollar go to someone local, or some big corporation exploiting a 3rd world country?   I’m really trying to vote with every dollar I spend.  Because of the Dottie Angel challenge, I have been inspired to learn about the things we buy and where they come from.  I have learned some saddening things, and my buying habits have changed as a result.

Mother’s day is coming up.  We’ll be hitting the farmers market on Saturday morning to shop for a gift.  Maybe some handmade soap, or even a homemade loaf of bread along with some jars of locally made jam and honey – that’s a gift I can feel good about.

How about you?  Where does your money go?  Do you have any tips you can share to help us all spend our money on things that are important to us and break us from the consumer spending cycle that surrounds us?

I promised a post about rayon, but I’ve decided to focus on bamboo which is a special type of rayon.  After discussing the ins and outs of bamboo, I’ll list a couple of eco-friendly rayons at the end.

In the last few years, bamboo fabrics have become a trendy thing in apparel and home textiles.  Fabric derived from bamboo is very soft, and absorbent.  Since bamboo grows quickly and without pesticides, bamboo fabric has caught on in the environmentally green sector.  There are further claims that bamboo is anti-bacterial and that it will decompose when disposed of.   Read more…