Alice's set

Alice's set
Originally uploaded by Saltygal.

This order serves as a perfect example of the dangers of attention deficit crafting. I had an order for 2 sleeves from one of my favorite customers . She is a real peach and has sent business my way many times. I wanted to really make this set perfect. I made the outer sleeve and it fit like a glove. I started on the small sleeve. The small sleeve required extra padding so I used 2 layers of padding and was going to quilt it. I didn't want the quilting to detract from the fabric, so I hand quilted around each of the skulls.I wish it showed in the photo ( still using the broken canon) It came out really nice and I had a button that was a perfect match for the eyes on one of the skulls. I was ready to take the shot when I noticed I had made the sleeve with the skulls facing upside down. I had marked the fabric which side up in the interfacing but i used a fade away marker . I was distracted and left it on the table for a hour and when I came back, the marking had faded and I completely forgot that the fabric had an up and down. Well no problem I thought, I had plenty of the skull fabric. When I went to get more of the aqua ling I only had a small piece left. I dashed off to the fabric store, no more, I went to the next store none. So I came home and tore through my scrap bags and found another piece just the length I needed. I worked very carefully and got the bag out of it but what a waste of time and energy! I'll never use a fading marker for that again!

catching my breath

The summer is passing me by. I waited so patiently for summer, to have the luxury of time to myself, time to catch up on all those projects that require fresh air and warm temps. Somehow it hasn't worked out that way. Good things and bad have kept me from any routine and the bulk of my time has been spent just keeping up. I am free right now because I have just returned from the airport to pick up my son from his holiday in Hawaii. I am not going to go downstairs and sew the dozens of projects that are calling me. Tonight I will take off and just allow myself the luxury of catching up on my favorite blogs and posting this , as meager as it is. I guess I need to write about crafting. I have been doing lots of sewing but almost all for things I've made before , nothing particularly creative or new. I am not complaining . My small bags were featured on funky finds which brought me some new customers. Also waaaaaay back in June, I sold one of my laptop sleeves to Alice who bought it as a surprise gift for someone. I had to hold it several weeks so it would arrive on the right day and somehow it was returned to me. I sent it off again. This time it found it's way and I later received a lovely note from Alice telling me the recipient loved it, even if it was late. A few days later my Etsy mailbox was filled with requests for more.
It turned out the sleeve was for Cory Doctorow who showed it off and linked to my shop Views have slowed but I am still receiving more visitors from that one post that all my other marketing efforts combined . It just goes to show you that a satisfied customer is your best advertisement.