Fabric Storage

This weekend I finally finished a fabric storage plan I had been thinking about for quite a while.  My sewing room looks so much more organized and cheerful!  It isn't done yet, so I'm not ready to share photos of the entire thing, but I will share this one small area for now.  Someday, I will get the curtains made, the lamps recovered, and all the clutter cleaned up.  Then I will take photos of everything in the room.

The entire area.

 Here is where I am keeping all the fabric, ribbons, and ric-rac I use to make my dinosaur dresses.  The piece hanging on the wall on the upper right has always been there.  It is a quilt rack with a shelf and has been very handy for hanging fabric and ribbons and such.  Now it only holds the pieces I have cut and ironed that are ready to be added as the lower contrast bands on the dresses.  The dinosaurs that are cut out and ready to be appliqued are up on the shelf, but are almost impossible to see from this angle (on the far left, next to the frame).

Fabric rack.

 This is my new (to me) fabric rack.  It is holding the fabric for the main body of the dresses that have been washed and ironed.  The rack is 1/4 of my kids' old crib.  It was a round crib, so it is curved.  It is hanging from two curtain rod brackets and the lower edge just rests against the wall.  The crib had a cherry finish, so I painted it white to go with my room.

Ribbon and ric-rac storage.

The ribbons that are cut to length and heat sealed and the ric-rac are hanging on a cane that my grandfather made.  He worked with wood his entire life and when he had difficulty walking, he started turning canes.  Like the crib side, it is also resting on curtain brackets. 

Overall, I love all my new storage, but could already use some more.  I'm not sure where I would put more though.  Maybe once I get the rest of the room in order I can decide if there is room for another crib side or cane somewhere.  The best part?  Total cost = $15 for two sets of curtain brackets, and some spray paint.

Etsy Backdrops

My Etsy shop has been open for about 4 months now, and I am finally getting the hang of some aspects of it.  Other things I am still working on and I have come to realize that it will always be a work in progress.  Taking photos of the things I make has been a real learning experience because I am hardly a good photographer to begin with.  It does not help things that since my products are for children, I use very young kids to model the shirts and dresses.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to get good photos of kids that also show off the clothing and make it look good?  Let me tell you, it is harder than you would think.

I have also learned that it is not easy to take photos of clothes either laid out or on a hanger and to have them lay nicely and still be interesting.  I have tried many things in my quest to get some decent photos to show off my work and here is one more step down that road.  Hopefully, someday I will end up with a fantastic look that I love.  Each change I make get me a little closer to what I am looking for.

The dinosaur pillowcase dresses are easily my best sellers, but I was starting to worry about how I was going to take pictures once the weather cools down.  I probably have about one more month before it will be too cool to have my daughter (or a borrowed friend) stand outside and show off these cute dresses.  I don't have room for a little photo studio anywhere in the house, but I was thinking that I needed some sort of backdrop.  I rummaged around in the basement and found that we had saved three pieces of the hideous paneling that covered many (many) of the walls of our house when we first moved in.  Why we have kept three pieces for over 10 years I have no idea, but I was very happy to find them.

before

 I forgot to get a "before" photo, but this is what all three panels looked like; just without the hole.  The two without holes got cleaned up and painted.

pale grey

This one is pale grey, and yes it is the same color as our downstairs bathroom.  I want the photos in my shop to look nice, but I am also cheap.  I went with the grey because it is a nice neutral that will go well with "the look" Etsy seems to prefer, but also because the white I had on hand was more glossy and I was afraid it would reflect too much light and look funny when photographed.  So far, I'm happy with how these turned out and they cost nothing but my sweat. (Seriously.  They day I decided to do this, it was blazing hot.)

knobs for hanging

I dug out some old knobs we replaced on a dresser and screwed them onto the board.  They are not perfectly spaced, but they are level.  They won't show in the photos, but I can hang either one or two items on at a time to take pictures.

aqua blue

Since I had two panels, I wanted my second one to have a brighter, but still light, color.  I had a ton of this aqua color left over from the kids' play kitchen that we built.  I love this color so much and think it will look great as a backdrop for many of my items.

I like that these are portable, so I can use them inside or out and I can move them around to wherever the best lighting happens to be.   I am hoping to find some cheap fabric in the remnant bin to cover the backs of these, so then I will have four different backgrounds to choose from.  I'm picturing a tone-on-tone damask in my head, but we will have to see what I can find.

Here is a sneak peak of a few things that I have photographed so far on my new backdrops.

Lucky Cat shirt on the grey.

A custom order dinosaur dress.

 

I love how bright and cheery the blue looks.

Big Brother/Little Sister

I have not blogged in a long, long while, but that does not mean that I have not been busy creating new things.  In fact, I have been so busy with stuff for my Etsy shop that I have not kept up with the blogging side of things.  Never fear!  I am back, and have several topics I am eager to cover which include fascinating topics such as: digging to the bottom of my scary pile of fabric, making cloth napkins for kindergarteners, and making new backdrops for my Etsy shop.  Today though, I'm going to show off a fun custom order I recently finished.

I recently attended my twenty year high school reunion (how can it possibly have been that long?) and reconnected with an old friend.  Her sister is expecting a baby girl and has a three year old boy who loves cars, trucks, and things that go.  Mom has a thing for lady bugs, and my friend asked if I could make a big brother/little sister set for the kids that included lady bugs, some sort of vehicle, and to do them fall colors on long sleeve shirt and onesie.  She wanted them to coordinate, and left it up to me to somehow make it work. 

I found a lady bug design and a tractor design that were each cute, but we wanted to put a ladybug into the tractor somehow.  Here are the original designs:

I have used my editing software for lots of minor things like combining designs, taking parts out of designs, and adding text.  What I had not done before was to overlap the designs, and then take away the stitching that would be covered by another part of the design.  It ended up being much more straight forward than I thought it would be, and once I had the sizing and positioning figured out, it was fairly simple.  I did have to do a little cleaning up of the proposed design, but overall, the program worked very well.

From the ladybug design, I kept just the red ladybug.  Then I flipped him around to face the other direction.  Then I sized him down to fit inside the tractor and moved him into position.  I then used the editing software to omit any of the stitches where the tractor overlapped the ladybug.

I think both shirts turned out really cute.  I love that they can stand on their own, but that they are even cuter together.  I hope the mom-to-be and both of her kids like these.

Both shirts together.

I could not find a onesie and a shirt the exact same color in the sizes I needed, so I went with complimentary colors and then used the orange and green on the opposite shirts.  I apologize for how these are hanging a little wonky.  I have fixed that problem (more on that soon), but the shirts are already on their way to my friend.

Just the little sister onesie. 

I used various shades of orange for the lady bugs to coordinate with the brother's shirt.  Also, bright red made it look oddly Christmas-y.

Big brother shirt.  My son, age 5, saw this and loved it.  He was very disappointed that it was not for him.

The ladybug looks so happy to be driving the tractor.

Close-up of the designs together to see how nicely they compliment each other.