Friday, March 9, 2012

Crafty rambles.

I never want to be one of those Etsy shop owners whose blog revolves around shop updates, because I think that's pretty annoying. :) But I haven't posted about an update in a while, so I wanted to share some new items listed in the shop this past week:



This is a new fabric from the store- I've never used it before. I wondered at first if it might be a little too oversized for my relatively small items, but I think it works.





I love this fabric. :) It was one of my favorites when I first started sewing, so I made almost anything you can imagine out of this fabric. But surprisingly, I never made anything to sell from it. I saw it the other week in the clearance at Hobby Lobby, which always seems to mean that it's going to be discontinued. I need to get a bit more of it before it's gone.



{My white Etsy backgrounds are always so shadowy and inconsistent. I need to work on that.}

In other crafty news, I don't have any new embroidery to share yet. I haven't been able to work on my plans for shop-related embroidery, because I've been brainstorming for the Wild Olive Stitch Swap. I haven't started on the main piece for my partner yet, but I have finished a little extra bit. I have to buy ribbon tomorrow and frame it, and then I'll have pictures.

But here's a peek of my first experience with sketching out my own cross stitch design. This was the rough draft and it ended up a little differently, but I'm proud of how it turned out. :)


I also spent several mornings this week wrestling with a muslin for a new shirt. I have this Old Navy button-up shirt that I love, and I'm attempting to make a shirt really similar to it. I keep making adjustments to the pattern because I want it to be just right- a pattern that I can use over and over. Now the last problem to tackle is the sleeves...the armhole and top part of the sleeve are a little too tight.

I was hoping to have the shirt finished by the weekend and to have pictures, but it's not going to work out that way because the adjustments are taking longer than I expected. I keep repeating to myself two of my sewing goals for the year: Only make clothes that I love, and focus on quality, process, and making things better. I'm determined to overcome my rushed, "oh, it fits well enough as it is" tendencies. :)

I have a love-hate relationship with sewing clothes. I love it when I'm motivated and the pattern adjustments I'm making are actually working and I feel like I could tackle sewing anything. I hate it when things are too tight or too baggy, and I can't wrap my non-mathematical brain around how to properly change something. I'm confident and excited one minute and completely insecure the next.

This morning my sewing corner is a disaster area from the past couple of days and I'm a little scared to go in there just yet. :)

By the way, I hope you guys don't mind this one-or-two-posts-a-week routine that I seem to have fallen into with the blog this year. I rather like it myself...I've been realizing lately that I spend entirely too much time online.

Blogs, crafty websites, Pinterest, etc. are great for inspiration and ideas, but they're also huge time-wasters. For me, anyway. I want to spend my time doing worthwhile things rather than sitting in front of a screen. In fact, that seems to be a goal for almost every area of my life right now: trying to sort out the meaningful from the meaningless.

Wow. I apologize for the randomness and rambling of this post. I'm all over the place!

Until next time,

1 comment:

  1. I love those new fabrics! They make lovely wallets. :)

    ReplyDelete

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