VIP's (vintage inspired Pinnies) and more!

Another busy week has flown by, its hard to believe Christmas is THIS Friday! Yesterday was Christmas KraftBomb market. The busiest yet! I had a very successful day, the morepork butlers again where a huge hit and I sold out, and then had requests for more next month please! I also debuted the vintage inspired pinnies(aprons) or VIP's as I like to call them. I had a lot of interest and sold a couple! Like with all things I find it really hard to decide on a price, at the moment working it out by cost of materials and time involved, but Jason has suggested I should put my hourly rate up a little, hmm hard to know.  The zippity doodahs were  popular for Christmas gifts so now I need to find some time to replenish the stock for the next craftmarket and for on felt.co.nz. Plans for this week; tidying up the chaos from last weeks crafty explosion and getting ready to tackle some new VIP's as I find the time over the Christmas break, and of course inventing new zippity doodahs!

Sunday Night, almost bedtime...

What a busy weekend! Saturday was crafternoon tea craft market. A steady day, I met some new crafters and said hello to some now familiar faces. The Morepork/Owl doorstops were a hit! I also spent Friday making some earrings from the zip sliders that are left over from when I make ZippityDooDah's, and they were well received with a few customers buying the zippitydoodah brooch and then the matching earrings which made me giggle, perhaps I'll have to start saying "would you like earrings with that.."  Today was spent making my 12 year old daughter a dress to wear to her school social dinner and dance tomorrow night. I really struggled with what to make as she is only 12 and I didn't want to dress her as older than she is. Finally decided on a dress design and made it up today in lovely green silk that I got from the Trelise Cooper fabric store sale, and managed to find a zip in the right colour and length from my collection of zippers!  

Its a zippity DooDah day!

I have been busy with Zippity Do Dah requests. In case you aren't aware Zippity DooDahs are flowers created from old zips. I sent a collection in with Jason to work so he could photograph them beautifully for me ( one of the advantages to having our own photostudio!) and he stayed late and then forgot to bring the Disc home for me. So no new photos yet but hopefully tonight or tomorrow.  I've also been playing around with some patterns for Aprons, hoping to use up some pieces of cotton fabrics from the collection. Not much to show yet as the patterns were a little more fiddler than I had anticipated. The challenge is t make the design/pattern so the pieces are  going to fit on the size of the fabric pieces I have squirrelled away. 

Monday, Monday...

Start of  a new week and I have a table at Crafternoon tea this weekend, so I'm motivated to get a few more things finished before then. Last week was very productive and I found a use for a collection of Laura Ashley Upholstery fabric samples that I had been hoarding. Inspiration hit and I created Morepork (owl) Butlers. What is a morepork butler? Its a native NZ owl themed doorstop.The idea being that a butler will hold a door open for you :-) Once I had worked out the pattern they were quite easy to make and best of all I managed to use up a lot of the brown fabrics that I was not terribly inspired by With there being a bit of a fashion for all things bird themed I'm hoping they will be popular at the craft fair!

Speaking of brown fabric I also had a length of brown suede type fabric that had been languishing, and with Christmas just around the corner I decided to make some Chris (tina) Mouse (s). these are little soft toy mice wearing little green sequinned A line dresses( looks like a Christmas tree) that I embellished with fancy buttons that I had hoarded. Fantastic as I utilised the leftover sequin fabric from a Mermaid costume I had made and buttons that were left over but too nice to throw away.

Photo to follow....

The Enterprising Beginning.....

Welcome to the Waste not, Want knot project. The goal is to turn textile waste into desirable objects that people want. Its a combination of all those things our grandparents told us waste not, want not, combined with modern day landfill avoidance, reduce, reuse, recycle, and a need to liberate a great collection of fabrics and trims amassed over a few years from the back of my wardrobe, under my bed, in the roof space etc.... I have a design degree and an addiction to textile arts and crafts, lets see where it leads....