Wlydhare's Hollow

Orphans

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!

 

Crafty Fridays

I have decided to make an official day each week just for me, just for crafting, what ever tickles my fancy!

There is always a bit of a guilt factor for me when I craft just for fun. The little voice in the back of my head nags me. "Isn't there laundry to do?" "I saw a pile of ironing waiting to be done." "The living room floor really needs a vacuum." "You need to be working on the machine embroidery business!"

So, in order to find a balance, I have decided that I will focus the majority of the week on work and chores, but give myself a day off each week to just play.

One of my on-going projects is finishing the doll house which has been sitting in a corner of the craft room for..well for years. That was my New Year's resolution. I have managed to get the 1st floor done, and I am now working on the second. The silly thing seems like it should just go together in an afternoon but there is SO much painting if it is to be done right. Primer goes down on the wood, then a coat of paint, then sanding, then a coat of paint, then more sanding, then a final coat of paint. I know that seems like a lot, but in small scale, even little bits of roughness in the wood, takes away from the illusion of scale (and I am a bit of a perfectionist! My grandpa always said if you were going to do a job, to take the time and do it right.) Even the walls to be wallpapered should have at least one coat of paint to help the paper stick properly. (This is a trick, so if you want to change the wall paper later, it will actually come off and not be permanently stuck to the wood.)

Yeah! I don't have to paint where the singles will be going!

So the last two Friday's have had time devoted to the many coats of paint, with other crafting between drying and sanding times.

I am trying to also get some older projects finished before I jump into new ones. That is only sorta working, because the new projects call my name in the middle of the night. Do you have that problem?

The kitchen towel I started at the quilting show got finished, and surprisingly only took about an additional hour. After wards I thought, "Well why didn't I do this sooner? It was easy to complete!" I tried out doing machine applique for the first time for the majority of the towel, then did had embroidered blanket stitch around the tongue and fish bowl plant. Then I added little beads as bubbles for Mr. Fish, and embroidered a mouth and nose on Mr. Kitty., and finished things off with a couple eyes.

Then finally, I did a quick new project using a little pattern from Bird Brains which I also picked up at the quilt show. It wouldn't stop calling my name and I needed to make the voices stop. *grin*

How cute is that? See why I couldn't wait!

While I can't share this pattern for a little pin cushion, I can share a similar one from a vintage children's magazine called "Children's Activities." If I recall, this issue was somewhere in the 40s. If I was really diligent, I would go look up the exact issue, but that sounds like way too much hunting at the moment.

I did create a PDF file of this, which you can print and use for yourself. It should be easy enough to add leaves from green felt, if you want it to look a bit more like the one I made.

How do you make times for crafts? Do you have a special day? Do you have a place just for crafting? Please share, I would love to know.
   

Spring Sewing and Quilting Show

If there were only more hours in the day to do the fun stuff! Last week I went to a sewing and quilting show at the local fair grounds.

It was primarily to get information and ideas for my machine embroidery business. They were having a special on the top 100 most popular colors for embroidery machines, 50% off! But now I don't want to store the spools properly, they looks so pretty in the box!

 Our cat Milkyway approved as well.

They had some make-and-take projects and it can't all be work and no play, right? This one involved using wonder-under to do applique work on a kitchen towel. I need to machine zig-zag around the edges still, and do some finishing touches, like the eyes and mouth.

 Poor thing can't see! I feel guilty!

I found a new design company called Bird Brain Designs. They do wonderful, country style redwork, as well a felting, and projects in felt. This is a pattern I bought from them. Isn't the strawberry pin cushion the cutest? Can you see the little ladybug on the green felt leaf?

I found a few other goodies to bring home as well, now I just need to find the free time to just do what I want to do. My first project is going to be that pincushion!

Oh, I almost forgot!! The other cool thing about Bird Brain Designs is their free patterns!! If you like doing redwork, I highly recommend you check them out.

If you had free magical hours right now, what would you be doing? 
  

Hands of Hope

My sister, Beth, is such an inspiration to me! She has started a non-profit group called Hands of Hope which works in conjunction with Girl-Child Network Worldwide

 

I suppose it would help to explain the Girl-Child Network Worldwide first. They are an organization working with girls in African countries who are victims of abuse, human trafficking and/or rape  to help them transform into survivors and leaders. GCNW builds centers which provide education, medical care, legal assistance and police protection.

My sister started Hands of Hope to use needlework (her huge passion!) to help in this process. Kits are put together of embroidery hoops, floss, needles, scissors, cloth, etc. and then sent to the GCNW centers in Africa. There, interested girls are taught embroidery skills and will practice with the provided kit. With guidance they are then taught design basics and work to create an embroidery design of their own which represents something special to them.

 

When the design is completed, it will be sent back to Hands of Hope, where my sister will make kits to sell using the girl’s design. All proceeds will then be sent back to that girl, to help her gain the means to seek an education, starting a business or similar goals which will improve her life.

Beth runs an Etsy store where she sells hand-crafted items (she is SO talented) and then pours all profits into the supplies for her charity.

 

As you may recall, I am running a fledgling machine embroidery business called E’Bellish. Beth is my first customer, well guinea pig, because while I an donating my time and work to Hands of Hope, she has had to wait for me to learn what I am doing! LOL!  Doing a machine embroidery design from scratch may sound simple, but I have been working on it for over a month now. It required learning all sorts of things from creating vector graphics; providing the machine with instructions to compensation with the stretch of fabrics; and engineering the most effective order to stitch the design to reduce thread count, time and  distortion.

 

This weekend everything has been coming together and it is SO exciting! Beth has been sending out sponsorship requests and just learned on Friday that Janlynn Corporation (a national company which makes and sells needlework kits) wishes to be a long term sponsor and partner with Hands of Hope. I did a happy dance because I finally pulled it all together and successfully created and stitched out the logo for Hands of Hope. And finally, one of the items in the Hands of Hope Etsy store made the front page the Etsy site today, as a featured item!

How cool is all that? I am so, so proud of Beth and I hope you might take a moment to visit her website which further explains her vision Oh by the way, if you are interested in helping, she is currently running a contest with prizes for anyone who helps out.

 

 

The Dollhouse Resolution

There are a lot of balls to juggle, as of late. As I mentioned in my last blog, I am working on launching my machine embroidery business. I feel progress is good in that area. I have come up with a name, E' Bellish, ordered business cards, reserved URLs for a website and am filling out the small business applications for the city, while working on getting up to speed on the software I need to know.

Meanwhile, my brother-in-law, who has a little B&B in France is having problems with the company who has been providing info on his B&B, as well as setting up reservations. So he asked if I can make a website for his property. I have not designed a website from top-to-bottom in over 5 years, so I am suspecting I will be a bit rusty. Just to be clear, I am not complaining, I just need to share a bit of the chaos. *grin*

I have had to really cut back on my crafty stuff, which is really rough, but realistic if I am going to successfully launch E' Bellish. So Sunday I block as my day of relaxation and give myself permission to just play. Yesterday I chose to spend some quality time on my dollhouse, which I have talked about in past blogs.

Rewiring was done for the electrical and I was able to get the lights to work! Woohoo! So I re-wallpapered the kitchen and re-did the trim around the window in the kitchen.

Then I added the baseboard trim downstairs. Finally I was able to decorate with all the goodies I have been collecting for the last 10 years. Some of the items in the house were made by me. Many were made by very skilled artisans in the world of miniatures.

For instance, I assembled and upholstered the arm chair on the left, but the beautiful needlework on the footstool was done by my friend Jo Berbiglia. She used a single strand of silk floss and her work is amazing. The clock on the wall was made by a man in Spain, unfortunately, I can't recall his name, but his work is stunning. And the spinning wheel was made by another friend in our miniature group, named Al Cushman. By the way, please think good thoughts for him. He is elderly and is in the hospital for severe pneumonia.

In the kitchen, the sink was made by a pair of ladies who specialize in kitchen items. Their business is called Hammer and Smith. The stove is just regular dollhouse stock that you can find from most dollhouse shops. My favorite part is collecting all the details that turns it from a house to a home.

And I especially like vintage kitchen goodies. I can almost smell the cinnamon!  The table I also assembled and painted. The drawer really opens and closes.

I think it was Tasha Tudor, the artist and writer, who really got me into the joy and imagination a dollhouse can bring.

I want it to be a place I would want to live, with tea and sewing next to my comfy chair, the ticking of the family clock and the warm glow of a fireplace.

Well it is Monday now, and time to get back to responsibilities, work and chores. I hope you have enjoyed the little tour of the downstairs of my dollhouse and I wish you happiness and contentment till next we chat.
 

No Breaks This Week!

The recession has changed the career paths of many people, no news there, and our family has also been touched by the events of the last year.

A few months ago, I made a decision to try to make a living doing custom machine embroidery. I have always loved sewing and hand embroidery of every type, but it is very hard to make any money doing it, since the time and energy to embroider one kitchen towel exceeds any possible profit. My hope is that with machine embroidery I can create some wonderful, one-of-a-kind pieces, with labor and materials costs that will allow me to manage a profit. I also would like to use my creative skills to create my own line of designs, using what is called digitization software. For the geeks out there, that means creating a vector graphic of the design I wish to embroider, then assigning instructions for the machine on how to lay down the colors and what order to do the stitching in to make it look as professional as possible while keeping stretching, puckering and unwanted overlap from occurring.

So last week I spent four days attending a conference for professionals in the "decorative garment industry" learning all I could in classes, seminars and workshops. My poor little head is on the verge of exploding.

Meanwhile, I had to upgrade to a more robust computer to handle the digitizing software and so I have been busy setting that up and installing and learning my new embroidery software. Then last night, the CD/DVD drive just stopped working! Arghh! I had only had the machine 10 days! So I called Toshiba and the only solution is to send the computer back and be replaced. It will take 2-3 days for them to get the computer, then another 8-10 business days to build a new one, before they can send it back. *bummer*

So, to cheer myself up, I decided to work on my doll house, and get the electricity repaired in hopes of making my end-of-month deadline to finish the downstairs.

I carefully stripped all the wallpaper in the kitchen, with a mixture of water and vinegar.

I carefully repaired the wiring in the areas I had identified as having problems. Then, I went to test my work.

No joy. No only did my test light fail to light up, but the fuse immediately blew. *sigh* I replaced the fuse, tried again and that fuse went as well. Four fuses burned, nothing worked. I am so bummed. I will not make my end of month goal and now I have to order new wiring and pull out all the old stuff and start over with new wiring. Something in the old stuff is bad and shorting thing out the system and there is no way to isolate it at this point I am not getting any breaks this week!

I guess being discouraged makes successes all the sweeter! Speaking of success, I have been following Weight Watchers since early November. I have made it through Thanksgiving, my birthday, Christmas, New Years and way too many cravings and I have now lost a total of 18 lbs. Hmm, maybe it isn't all gray clouds and gloom! Find something to smile about! 

P.S. Any and all warm thoughts about my venture into a home business would be appreciated! I am scared to death and am not entirely sure I am sane! LOL!

Knitting

So, armed with Knitting for Dummies, online video demonstrations and a stubborn streak, I have started my knitting adventure.

I am too anal for my own good sometimes though. I think I casted on 4 or 5 times before I was happy with the spacing and tension!

And then I practiced knitting, purling and increasing for a few hours and did even more ripping out, but eventually I got the hang of that as well.

I then learned to increase and went to change to another color and things started to go "pear shaped" as my British husband likes to say. Loops slipped and I didn't get them back on the needles correctly and then I knitted when I should have pearled. *Blah!* But it was all good practice and I decided to start over with a different yarn I like the colors on better and will use the mistakes I made as a learning experience!

Meanwhile, when not working on knitting, I decided to finish up a miniature room box which I stated a few years back. There were only a few things I had left to do, but I kept putting them off. So I finally got to work and finished it and the doll to go inside (she has been sitting around hairless for like 5 years!) Here is the finished result:

 

 

 

And what is the rest of the house doing while I work?

 

Minux

 

Milkyway

Embroidery Finished!

Here is how my version of Follow the White Bunny's Bunny Stitch Along pattern turned out. I decided to make mine into a tea towel for fall. I have not sewn on the leaf buttons yet, but hopefully you get the idea on how it will look.

With this done, I guess I no longer have an excuse to not try to knit that hedgehog! Why am I such a chicken butt??

Summer Creativity

My office job is no longer, so suddenly I have a lot more time to focus on creative endeavors. This is both exciting and scary, because now I need to put my money where my mouth is, so to speak.

As I mentioned in my last post, I am going to try to knit Little Cotton Rabbits adorable hedgehog. I have the skein of yarn rolled into a ball, so I am ready to try. I am also finishing up an embroidery project which Follow the White Bunny is doing on Flickr. And finally, I have been painting clothespin pegs to try my hand at clothespins dolls such as Piccalillimakes. I do love all the inspiration and encouragement that is to found in craft blogs and Flickr!

In anticipation of a vacation in Hawaii in August, my daughters and I have been clothing fun accents so we can all make our own memory journals of the trip. We even found a fun, inexpensive underwater camera for when we try out snorkeling! I will definitely be taking needlework on that trip. What could be more lovely than sunshine, cooling trade winds, refreshing cool drinks and not a phone or television in sight?!

Happy Summer!

I'm So Excited!

I had the honor today of being featured over in the blog of Craft magazine!!

Click here to see my 15 minutes of fame at Craft!