More WIP!

Here's another look at the tiny amount of work I have done on the Mermaid Quilt. It has to be finished on Saturday so I'd better get my bum in gear!!

And here's a close up of the tail but you can't really see the buttons - it's been appalling weather here and I couldn't be bothered to climb the 2 flights of stairs to take the photo in my light box!


I also went to the charity shops this morning and have bought some very nice things. This will have to be a post tomorrow though as Tara got me out of bed this morning at 4.53. I was not impressed!!!
Night night ;)

Batch sewing

Now, those of you who read this blog and who are 'proper' seamstresses will probably say 'well of course' to my next comment. I have just discovered 'batch sewing'. That's a made up term by me - well I think it is anyway - to describe a new sewing 'thing' I have discovered. When I made up some of my chickens before I would always make them up in one go. Cut fabric, sew the bits together, add the zip, add eyes and then done. But I have just discovered that if I spend time cutting up all the material and pinning together in place, then start sewing two edges and then do all the zips, it saves so much time. It may sound daft and you will all be thinking 'but of course', but I am quite pleased! It means that I don't have the frustration of not finishing a whole chicken while Tara is asleep and getting frustrated with myself but I can say 'but I have cut out enough pieces to make 5 chickens! As you can guess, Tara doesn't sleep long!

I also have some work in progress to show you. It is at the very start of the project and looks very basic at the moment but hopefully it will be done soon. Well it's actually got to be done by the end of the month if I want to enter it into the Etsy Challenge. Better get my skates on then!!

Busy, busy, busy!

All I seem to be doing at the moment is making chickens - well getting the bits all ready to be made then frantically running around the house looking for the invisible thread that goes in my machine!! I found it on the side in the front room thankfully! I've got three chickens ready to be sewn so hopefully that will be done this afternoon when Tara is down for her nap. One is a commission order that might lead to retail sales (watch this space!) and one has been sold through Tuggle. The other is for a secret project that I can't post about yet - I will be able to show it off to you soon. I also need to make up some more to put on both Tuggle and Etsy.

I managed to finish the knitting needle bracelets I was making the other day for another commission order (don't you just love commissions!?) Here's a photo of them all - 20 in total.


Anyway - hopefully there will be another post later on to show you the chickens. Got to get my jeans back on now (been in my jama's all morning cos my jeans were wet through) to go out in the pouring rain to collect Anya from nursery - I think I'm going in the car!

Typical.......

.....isn't it that when you have lots of custom orders to do one of your children falls sick. Hopefully Tara is on the mend now (touching wood and other superstitious things!) and hopefully I will get back to you with a proper blog post with all my custom goodies soon!

Follow on.....

......from yesterdays very brief post!! It has been hectic these past couple of days. I had to send off some of my stock - well one bag really - for a craft fair that is happening in London this weekend. James, the guy organising it, is having one craft stall at this event and he wanted some of my stuff. I've sent off some business cards too so hopefully I can get some business from that. I've sold 2 lots of recycled envelopes on Etsy which is good because I wasn't sure how well they would sell. The ones I've sold were these French Interiors ones to America so I'll just have to go back to France and get some more!!



I also sold 8 of my knitting needle bracelets and then the lady came back to me and said she wanted 12 more! So I'm going to be busy this weekend..... Here are the needles that she wants making into bracelets.

I've also had a request to make two birthday cards so that is on my list of things to do as well! Even though I am crossing lots of things off the list it seems to be getting longer and longer.

My friend has also just had her baby at 2.38 this morning at home! It's a little baby boy as yet un-named. I'm hopefully going to see her tomorrow so I will be able to unveil the present I have made for her once she has got it!

Oh - there are also some new things in the shop - go buy!!

Busy, busy but good busy!

Phew - hectic week! Lots of customs orders coming in to swirlyarts HQ which is good. It's late so I'm off to bed - hopefully a proper post tomorrow!
Night night

Photo's

It's typical that now I've figured out how to take decent photographs of my work that I can't take decent photo's of myself!! I've joined a couple of wardrobe groups on Flickr here and here and they are great for inspiration. The only trouble is that I have great disasters trying to get a decent photo of me and the outfit I am wearing! And I can't ask Matt to take the photo's cos he is away during the week..... Anyway, any advice would be much appreciated!



The third one is the best but it looks a bit school teacher (I did used to be a teacher so I know what I'm talking about!!) It also looks like the mirrors in my house need a very good clean!

Busy weekend

Well I've been away this weekend at the in laws helping out with the church's annual garden party which is held in their garden. I'll have to see if I can dig up some photographs of their garden as we didn't take any this weekend. We were just so busy. Food is served at the party and people used to queue up at the kitchen door to get their food. However, last year people had to wait for ages for their food and more often than not they got to the front and what they wanted had sold out. So this year Pat sold some tickets before the day and people requested their food. This was great as we knew that 39 people wanted coronation chicken, 30 salmon etc etc so we plated it up for them and they just told us when they sat down. Also we had waitresses this time and although it was very, very hectic it worked quite well. I'd forgotten how much I hated being a waitress!!

Now this photo was taken a couple of years ago so it actually look quite bare round the pond - it has filled out a lot since then!! I don't have any more decent photo's of the garden so this will have to do I'm afraid. Needless to say I took lots of craft stuff to do but none of it got done as we were all very tired and wine had been drunk so I didn't trust myself with the guillotine!!

Parcel excitement!

Don't you always get excited when the postman arrives? I know it's not just me! Well this morning he brought me a lovely little package from the ladies at Swoon. I stumbled across their shop a while back but then re-visited it recently. They sell THE most gorgeous underwear and of course being on Etsy it is all handmade. Anyway, I haven't actually ordered anything from them yet but I asked for one of their badges that I'd seen on the blog. Anyway, not only did I get three badges but I got some lovely postcards too.


I'm afraid the photo's of the badges didn't come out too well as I am lazy and didn't want to unpin them from the dress I pinned them to this morning!!

Envelope madness!

Well I've finally got round to using some of the vast hordes of magazine pages I've been keeping since Christmas. I've been busy making envelopes out of them for the past couple of weekends and I've been photographing some of them today. 3 lots are up for sale in the shop here and I'm planning on getting more up soon. Here's a sneak peek of some that will be going up in the shop later this week/weekend.



If you like the look of any of these then just shout and I'll load them up for you!!

Promises, promises.......

Well I'm so glad that I mentioned here that I would be blogging every other day!! Since that post I haven't been back! Just soooo busy and by the time I remember to blog then its bedtime. Anyway here's a look at some of the things that I have been doing! They are all available in the shop!

Here's another Swirlyarts chicken and this one is a funky 60's flower power chicken! It has been suggested on Flickr that he should be called Englebert, which I think is a very cool name.

I made these notecards with some things that came from the UK Etsy Swap Group on Flickr. My favourite is the Indian boy one - I used a piece of a Hindi newspaper that I picked up when we were in Goa.