Oh my goodness, what a BUSY summer it has been! I kept trying to find time to blog and life kept giving me one detour after another! Finally, things seem to be back in a sane rhythm again.
The chaos all centers around me setting up and getting my home business set up and running. And here I thought it would just be a walk in the park! Silly me!
But now, The Beast holds court in the front room, where I have a nice view of the front yard while I work. For machine embroidery geeks, this is the Babylock Entrepreneur with 10 needles. It sews up to 1000 stitches per minute and well, is a beast!
And, my business,E'Bellish, now has a website!
I hope for machine embroidery to be our prime income, but I have also been making jewelry out of fine silver, which I hope to sell in an Etsy shop once we are back from a trip to see my husband's family in the UK.
My biggest embroidery order, to date, has been jackets for a cruise group of 62 people! Let me tell you, the beast was running virtually day and night for ages! The cats were not amused! I had to stop in the evenings so the girls could do homework.
So, after all those waking hours working and working and working, I have been on a mini work vacation, since I can't start any big new orders between now and when we leave for Europe. As a reward, I am playing for a few days and working on craft orphans. You know, the projects you start and don't get around to finishing?
So my first orphan to work on is a doll kit to make a Hitty doll by Gail Wilson. The real Hitty in the book "Hitty: Her First Hundred Years" is all wood, but I was pretty sure I would carve a digit off, doing a doll that way. Gail has a version where the head, arms and legs are done in paper mache and painted to look like wood, and she has a cloth body. I was so nervous about painting her face. Generally, I avoid painting, it just is not very high in my artistic skill set. But I really wanted to make Hitty, so I made myself get past that fear and painted really, really, really slowly. And it worked!! The other challenging part was attaching her clothing body to her head and limbs. I didn't realize that would be so tricky!
Then, feeling on a roll, I worked on my poor, neglected Block of the Month 2009 from Bunny Hill. Two months down now! At this rate, I will be done in another ten years! LOL! I do like how it turned out though.
Then finally, I had two jewelry projects that had been left only partially completed when the great embroidery projects came to my door. So I finished those two, with my first attempt at setting a stone. (I think the color was not quite right, but I will try again later.) I do like how the owls turned out though.
Next, I hope to dress poor Hitty, so she isn't cold this winter! Check back and I will post some pictures when it is finished. I also hope to post some fun vintage fall and Halloween graphics soon.
Happy Fall!
