Two Sisters

Today I finished two custom pillows for two little girls, sisters, Alice and Vera. I used a set of Japanese cotton prints on Vera's and Lizzy House's red Letter Day cotton prints on Alice's. The pillows are 40 by 60cm.

I am so pleased at how they turned out, I hope they will be too!

First listing all set to go up!

 

I am getting ready to launch my Etsy store! I finished making the first two items yesterday, and will be sewing like mad in the coming days so I am ready to start listing before the end of the month!

It has been a busy week for us. I have registered my company, opened a bank account, upgraded my PayPal account andam almost done with the shop policies. Once I have my bio ready to go, I am all set. At least for the first stage. 

On a later stage, I want to go live with my website, Facebook fan page and post more consistently on the blog. So, I have a lot of work ahead of my! If my daughter cooperates and sleeps solid 3h naps each day and my husband picks up the slack in the weekends, I might be able to get it all set by May. Wouldn't that be something! 

Of course, with all the excitement of opening up the shop comes a lot of insecurity. There are so many talented people out there, selling wonderfully crafted things that it is hard to not get discouraged and give up! What if no one buys anything? What if they come back and demand their money back? What if, what if? So, I make everything as perfect as possible and hope for the best. Worst case scenario, I won't have to get stressed about Christmas shopping. And if it works out, well, that will just make each successful sale that much sweeter!

Somebody stop me!

I have somehow managed to make another pillow this week, this time for a friend who's having a little girl, Maria, in a few weeks. I am so pleased at how it's turned out, it's the cutest one yet!

I used some leftover Red Letter Day fabrics by Lizzy House and remnant white canvas. The insert was made out of repurposed curtains and 100% polyester filing.  

  

 I followed the same method as before but this time I decided to make a separate insert and add a zipper to the cover so it's easy to wash.

 

As a final touch, I used one of my very first Moo minicards as a tag! I hope they like it!!

Elin&Jim

I have been experimenting with applique, in the last few days. It is really cute and makes the most simple project interesting and fun. Two of the most successful projects finished are these two personalized pillows. I have made them for friends' kids with birthdays coming up: Elin and Jim.

They both turn one in March and and they both moved/will move to a new house, so what better present than something for their new bedroom? I think they turned out really good and even the applique borders look acceptable (please don't look too closely!).

For Elin's pillow, I mixed and matched four different cotton fabrics to create the letters and patchwork frame. The back is off white cotton. For Jim's, I used Alexander Henry's Zoo in blue to create the frame and a simple dark blue checkered cotton on the name. The back is heavy weight green cotton. I used 100% polyester as filling.

Now the challenge for future similar projects (and there will be tons of them as these are so much fun to make) is to make them environment friendly. The fabrics are the easy part, I will be able to use scraps, remnants and repurposed materials. The filling, however, will be trickier - using old pillows for kids and babies is out of the question, so I will have to look into organic or recycled fillings which is more difficult and more expensive to source. I have found some options at Hart's Fabric but finding closer to home will not be as easy!