Spring Forward

Don't forget to spring forward your clocks tonight, another sign that spring is on it's way! I love the longer amount of day light. My husband and I spend our spring and summer evenings in the garden ususally or around a camp fire on the weekends. He's so ready for gardening. The last couple weekends he's been planting seeds in the greenhouse, turning the compost, and getting the soil ready.

I, on the other hand, have been keeping busy with sewing orders on evenings and weekends. I'm thankful for the increase in Etsy orders! One of my goals has been to buy a large bolt of fabric, which I did yesterday! I'm so excited for it to come (weirdo). Still having a day job means I'm extra busy when I get home, but for now it's manageable. My day job is slow right now (due to the economy) that I don't feel completely worn out when I get home. During the down times at my day job, I tend to draw sketches of what I'm going to sew when I get home.

Speaking of spring, here are a few of the items I've been working on:

So much to do, so little time

I watched most of the Etsy Success Symposium last week and I found it so so inspiring! There are many changes I want to make to my item descriptions and update my blog more often and list more items and create more unique designs and whoa breathe slow down! Yes, OK, I admit I'm a bit overwhelmed by all of the things I need to do or feel like I should do. I appreciated the session on setting goals because while I know what goals I have, I am having some trouble setting the steps in between in a realistic sorta way. I feel like I work constantly to try to achieve my goal, but I need to remember not to hurt relationships and myself along the way. I think I need to set a daily schedule so that I make sure I don't neglect people and other responsibilities I have at church and at work.

Snowed In!!!

In the valley, we don't get tons of snow. Last year was odd because we got about 2 feet of snow at one time and the ground was covered for a couple months. This week we got 9 inches, which was awesome because I LOVE getting snowed in. Folks of the north love to poke fun at how Virginia seems to shut down when it snows or even calls for snow. Thankfully I have a job that doesn't require me to drive there when the roads are bad. I feel terrible for those that have to venture out and slip slide around. :(

Being snowed in allowed me to get a lot of sewing done and to catch up on my housework. I came up with a couple new designs and a couple new colors! The first new color is red wine, a light red shade. The second, is avocado (one of my favorite fruits). Avocado was inspired by my new favorite avocado salsa recipe actually.

  

New Year, New Options

    OK, I know I said I would keep my blog up to date, sorry sorry sorry! I'm finding it difficult to find time to post, especially when the holidays hit. This year I had several orders right before and after Thanksgiving and Christmas which I was very thankful for! We always travel to Ohio during the holidays to visit my husband's family so that makes the holidays even more busy, but also fun. I thought I'd be going right back to my day job when we returned from Ohio, but an heating oil spill in our basement kept everyone out of the office (perhaps a blessing in disguise?? except for the lingering odor) so I got caught up on orders and housework that was neglected while were enjoying the holidays.
    For Christmas, I received the supplies I need for screen printing!!!! I'm so excited, except for the fact that I'm quickly out growing my space. I've successfully taken over our guest room and our laundry room with sewing, dyeing, and now screen printing equipment. My wonderful husband has agreed to give up his proposed man room in our unfinished attic space and let me move out of the guest room to the said "proposed man room". I love Joe and I'm thankful he puts up with all my ideas no matter how much space they take up :). He still has his Lego Room (for now). haha!

   Back to the screen printing, I have created several designs using the classic windows program Paint. I'm sure there are other programs I could use to draw designs, but paint works for now. I'm sharing, for the first time, 2 of my upcoming designs (with a water mark on top). My drawings were inspired by our beautiful Shenandoah Valley and vintage t-shirts I have that my were my mom's. She keeps all old t-shirts to make future quilts. I can't wait to offer more options in my Etsy shop!

It's really feeling like FALL!

I'm so excited that today finally feels like fall! Even though it's raining like crazy outside, I am welcoming the cooler temperatures with open arms. The many many days of 90 + degrees this summer were really getting old. Yesterday I broke out the hot tea, socks, and long sleeves! I even started thinking about my flannel shirts that I had packed up for summer. I think today I will create a few items with a fall feel to them. Leaves are a favorite of mine and I hope to work them into some upcoming designs!

I am really loving dyeing my own fabric. I love the freedom to create all sorts of new colors that I longed for. I still have some organic cotton fabric that I bought pre-dyed. All of the organic cotton fabric I have has been manufactured in the USA. I feel that it's really important to know where your fabric is coming from and that those who made it were not harmed or paid unfairly in the process. I've been researching more about fair trade fabric and where I can get it. This has not been an easy task! Maybe I'm not very trusting, but unless it is fair trade certified or made in the USA I tend to stay away. Is all fabric made in the USA fair trade? Hmm...this is something I wonder about too. Any thoughts?

Long Time No See!

It's been way too long since my last post!!! Our summer got really busy and went by faster than the speed of light! Now that it's over, I've been overwhelmed trying to get items ready for our first craft show this weekend. Trying to balance working about 30 hours at my day job and then coming home and trying to build my Etsy business has become quite difficult. I so long for the day I can just focus on my Etsy shop and forget the long early morning commute to my day job and then the tired evenings of sewing and trying to promote my shop. I'm not giving up though, just venting : P

I have dabbled in dying fabric in buckets before, but in our little bathroom, it was a huge mess! I now have transformed our laundry room into a place to dye fabric with fiber reactive dyes and I LOVE it! Organic fabric color choices are quite limited and the ability to create my own colors has been so exciting! The process wasn't nearly as intimidating as I had anticipated. YAY!

I have included a couple of pictures of my transformed work areas and a few of the new colors, which I will be adding to my Etsy collection soon.

I must be thinking about Fall

This weekend I got an urge to use my sweatshirt fleece. Ironically, it's been near 100 degrees here and nobody needs a jacket! Thankfully we finally got rain, which cooled things down a bit. We may experience some cooler evenings at some point. I made two jackets this weekend and I was pretty happy with how they turned out. I am taking one to the beach with me in case we have a cool evening.