I’ve entered my first craft show. My handmade goodies will be for sale November 23-December 9th at the Poricy Park Holiday Shop.

I’ve just made a few things to see if anyone will actually buy them. If they sell out I can make more, but I figured I’d start small. A handful of mug rugs.

Some coasters and table runners.

These cute felt Advent calendars I designed.

I’m also really excited about these business cards/tags I made. I’m actually really proud of these, too.

We’ll see what happens, if anyone buys anything.

And it’s called a Janome Jem Platinum 760.

My mom treated me to a new sewing machine for my birthday. I was reluctant to accept a pricey gift like this, but as sewing machines go this is pretty reasonable. And as I’ve posted recently, my old Kenmore has had it.

So really, I’m thrilled to have a new machine. And this machine is like a Porsche to my Kenmore’s Chevy Cavalier. I can’t wait for the weekend so I can try and make something with it.

I still don’t know what this means for my elusive Etsy shop. Now that I’ve got a shiny new machine, I’ve also got about 5  projects at work that have all come to a head at once. Two reading clubs, Read Across America on March 2nd, a couple hundred new books to be processed and shelved, starting checkout with the kindergarteners, and a few other odds and ends. So it may be a while. We shall see.

In the meantime, I have a new toy!

I haven’t made anything lately because my machine is misbehaving. I think I just wore it out during the holidays. And it’s more than 3 years old and has never been serviced. So it’s definitely time. I can’t sew more than a few inches without the bobbin thread getting all messed up or sucked back into the bobbin casing. So I need to take my little Kenmore in for servicing, and I’m having separation anxiety about it. I can’t use it in its current state, and I can’t stand the idea of leaving it somewhere for a few days, maybe even a week. I know this is completely ridiculous, especially since my self-imposed birthday Etsy deadline is just a couple of weeks away. Don’t think I’m going to make that deadline.

Remember the Bianco/Rosso bag? I was so excited about something I’d invented all on my own, and I whipped it up one night after work.

Well, after I’d made a few more things and gotten some more practice, I kind of fell out of love with it. Truth be told, I had no idea what I was doing and it’s poorly made. I actually started to hate it. I mean, the thing would hold together just fine. But the stitching was messy and uneven. And it hung strangely. And it was just a weird design. It started to depress me. Especially after I bought my lunch bag in September and discovered that Built NY makes double wine bottle bags that are far cooler than mine. So while I’m working on new designs for my soon-to-be-operational Etsy store, I decided to tweak it. I basically cut it in half and made individual bags. I actually like that idea more, it’s like pumping up the style factor on a regular wine bag. I can get behind that a little bit more. The white side failed horribly and wouldn’t keep the bottle upright. The red side worked perfectly.

Now, this is still pretty messy because all I did was tweak the existing bag. I definitely need to do some more work on the stitching and the size. I had to get rid of those weird wings at the bottom in the photo at left, and I pondered a gusset. But instead I made a box bottom (seen at right), and I think that works fine. So I’ll have to make another one to actually photograph and get a good pattern from, but this is a proof of concept. And that’s cool. I just have to do more tweaking to get it good and sell-worthy.

So the first things I’ve been working on for my Etsy store are coasters. Waaaay back in April of last year, I made my friend Maggie some coasters for her birthday. It was the subject of my very first post on this blog. I loved those coasters, and I decided that would be a good thing for me to make. But I wanted to speed up the process and do some cleaner, simpler designs to start with. So I’ve been working on all kinds of color variations and patterns, and these six are the first successful batch of combinations I’ve made. I’m really excited about them, and I’m becoming a little obsessed with coasters. They’re incredibly satisfying to make because they’re so quick, and they let me try different fabric combinations without the commitment of a big project.

So I’m sure I will be making more combinations, especially since I have limited yardage on some of these fabrics and may run out if people actually buy them. But I like this set of six designs to start. I’ll be selling them as groups of 4 for each design, but I’ve only made samples to start. I’ll be making most things to order at first, just so that I don’t risk having a houseful of made objects that no one buys. If there’s an interest, then I can start to make more ahead of time.

Adam is going to help me with the photos for all my items since he’s brilliant with a camera. I’ve decided that I want 5 items (coasters, baby blankets, etc.) to start, and I want them available in different color combinations. I won’t make samples of all the combinations, I did that for the coasters because they’re so small and it was so quick. And I want to have things up and running in my store by my birthday. February 10th. Sooner if I get everything together, but definitely by then.