Stuff on My Cat

Caught Miss Tutter (who has now, btw, changed her name to "Little Cat A" from Dr. Seuss) earlier today quietly piling piece after piece of her scrap fabric on the calmest of our cats, who was tolerantly putting up with it. Although she's staring out the cat door almost longingly, don't you think?

I should probably submit it to Stuff On My Cat.

A little quilt I made last week

It's been a while since I've posted anything quilting-related, so I thought I'd do a quick show and tell of a sweet little playmat I made a couple weeks ago for my sister-in-law Marilyn, who was soon attending a baby shower and needed some goodies:



Simple, but I just thought it was so cute. The blue doggie fabric is a flannel, and I matched it up with a great red and white batik with polka dots, and then got the idea to applique some big wool letters on it spelling out "WOOF." And then it just screamed for a doggie bone.

It's a little hard to see the detail, but I freehand quilted it all over with big loopy loops, which seemed to match the happy feel of the quilt, and then outline quilted the letters.


And finally I made a couple things to go along with it, because how cute would that be? I like everything in sets.

A family production

Brett, a dragon, and three very unhappy cats prepare to make a massive family visit to the vet this morning.

Happily, all parties involved came through unscathed.

The only problem...

...with a dragon suit is that it's really hard to sit in a chair with a tail.

Thank goodness the chair had a hole in the back.

Sofie dragon, ready to party

Sofie dragon, ready to party, originally uploaded by bellflowertextiles.

It just occurred to me that there's no way she can fit in her carseat with this great big tail! Oh well. We'll figure it out.

Sofie dragon, modeling her tail

Sofie dragon, modeling her tail, originally uploaded by bellflowertextiles.

Just finished the dragon suit today, in time for her school halloween potluck tonight!

Tutter's New Room

Sofie, who now insists on being called Tutter (on a good day) or something more complicated like "Oh Tutter Grand Poobah Of The Universe" (on a bad day) has recently gotten rid of her lovely big girl bed and moved into a two-person camping tent.



She stopped sleeping in her bed probably two months ago, insisting instead on sleeping on the floor. We moved her mattress down there in an attempt to make her more comfortable, and gave her a sleeping bag since it's drafty down there, and from a sleeping bag it was really only a logical step to go for the whole tent experience.

And, of course, she loves it! It's blue! It's tenty! She can put all her animals in it! What's not to love?



Here's a closeup of the animal party we had in there today.


I'd like to say her bed will be reappearing soon - it's so cute! But somehow, I have a feeling we're going to be cleaning around a ginormous tent until she's ten.

Gardening Season Is Over...

So I'm creating a new line of veggie-inspired bodysuits in my shop. Here's a sneak peek.

What do you think?

Blue Tutter

My daughter and a friend tonight playing with makeup at Molly's house, and living her dream of actually turning into a living, breathing blue mouse.

Isn't she pretty?

(Taken with my phone, sorry for the low res)

Creative Efforts - What I've Been UpTo

Just sharing a few of my recent creations!

Weather-inspired coffee sleeves, at left - of course I made these on a gray and rainy day here in Seattle. I love rain! Use one when it's sunny, one when it's rainy, or match them to your mood!

$19 for the set, which you can view here.

Magenta and orange makeup roll with 3" foldover tab - I never would have expected to put together magenta and orange and have it come out so pretty, but I love this color combination! I've made a few versions of this one and they always sell - only two left.

There are 11 pockets in this version - one 2", one 1.5", four 1", and four .75", to hold a variety of different brushes.

Lavender sachets, in one of my favorite fabrics - this sweet little cream and green trees print with the bright, bright leaves. After making a whole, whole bunch of pencil rolls from it recently, I had just this one 3" strip left and couldn't bear to see it go unused, so I put together these little lavender pillows. Just perfect for a drawer or bag!

I realize this turquoise and orange crayon roll is just crazy bright. But doesn't it make you feel happy?

I made and listed two of these but I think I'm going to take one of them out of the store and keep it for myself - Sofie's trusty crayon roll, which we've been lugging around in my purse for over two years now, is starting to look a little bedraggled, and I'm wanting a new one. And I think this is just the thing to get us through the winter.




And finally, I got my hands on some more of that gorgeous Paris linen that was so popular a few weeks back, and made a whole new set of Parisian pencil rolls, this time with a sweet cornflower blue interior with carnations, which I thought was a perfect fit.




Business is great these days - I'm working on a big baby shower order right now and the second half of an order for a preschool class that will soon be enjoying a set of nature-themed pencil rolls, as well as fielding orders from all over the globe. My most recent far-flung orders went to Damascus, Ontario, Australia, and Russia, all in the space of a single week. Not quite the four corners of the globe, but I'm getting closer!

Thanks so much for looking, and as always you can see all of these goodies and lots more in my shop at Bellflower Textiles!

Chaos and more chaos

Not a lot to say today since it's impossible to concentrate, given that we're in the midst of the second full day of having the house full of guys working on our now-defunct, 39-year-old furnace.

Last Friday someone came and spent 11 hours cleaning out our vents, a truly unpleasant experience that involved much chaos and equipment and moving of nearly every piece of heavy furniture in the house. Worth it, but truly a pain in the patooey, taking over the entire house as it did.

Reports of me being extremely grumpy about this were unfortunately not overstated. Many thanks to our very kind friend who took us all in for dinner that night when it became apparent that this was not going to wrap up until the wee hours of the night.

Today, another crew is taking out the old furnace (which essentially overheated and melted) and putting in a new one. Much less disruptive, in that the chaos is mainly constricted to the basement this time (and the dining room, later, when they change out our ancient thermostat - yay!) but still, loud as all get-out and difficult to ignore.

But tomorrow we will have heat! And not the puny, paltry heat that somehow never managed to reach all rooms of the house, leaving areas like our daughter's room freezing cold every day of the year, but REAL heat. Definitely worth putting up with some banging.

Seattle is still lurching around between fall and winter. One day it's 60 degrees, one day it's 40. Rainrainrain, then sunny. Fog this morning. I kind of like it, not quite knowing what kind of weather you're going to wake up to. We've still got tomatoes in the garden, which is very unusual - but aside from one week when it got cold enough that we quickly brought in the most valuable tomatoes to ripen inside, it's been warm enough to leave the cherry tomatoes out there to keep on keeping on. I think this might be the latest we've ever been able to go outside and pick a few ripe ones off the vines.

Soon it will frost, I'm sure. But we've already brought the 20-or-so yellow brandywines that hadn't ripened in, so if a quick frost destroys everything else we'll be fine, and just be grateful for the last few weeks we managed to squeeze in.

EtsyTwitter Team Shop of the Week: MindyG Jewelry

EtsyTwitter is a team I'm part of that helps promote each other's shops. Each week one shop is featured and gets blog, twitter, facebook, and other promotion by the rest of the team members. This week I'm excited that it's one of my favorite jewelry artists - I feature MindyG in treasuries I create on etsy all the time because her work and her photography is so lovely!

Owner Mindy Greenville finds inspiration for her work in nature, fashion, music, and traveling with her family. "Its a great outlet for my creative side," she says." In addition to her online boutique, Mindy also designs custom bridal/bridesmaids jewelry locally in the San Diego area.

Introduced to Twitter when she joined the Etsy Twitter Team, she discovered a whole new way to connect. "I started using Twitter as a way to help promote my business and other artists that have amazing products to offer to the public. The power of online networking is a huge tool and a great way to meet others of like mind, those in the same trade who can offer advice, or just find some neat art!"

The shop happily offers flat rate domestic and international shipping as well as custom designs. "I offer something for just about everyone-birthdays, anniversarys, for moms, sisters, and teacher gifts. "

You can discover Mindy's many treasures in her etsy shop: http://mindyg.etsy.com/ or on her blog. On Twitter, www.twitter.com/mindyg.

One free “surprise gift with each purchase” 10/12/09-10/18/09. At checkout please type “ETT Gift” in the message to seller notes.

Underway... nature and kid fabrics

Just wanted to show half of a really fun order I'm working on for a preschool in a neighboring state - they want ten pencil rolls in fabrics that are both kid-friendly and whose patterns reflect the natural world. How cool is that? Here are the first five all finished up and ready to send out later this week.

This has been a fun way to use up some older fabrics that have been languishing unused for a while. I decided I was going to "shop at home" for this order, and dug around on my shelf to find things that fit the bill. So far, from left to right, we have Robert Kauffman frogs, a gorgeous little fat quarter I had with apple trees, a yellow Japanese canvas print with ladybugs and clover, a fun zoo animal print, and the last little bit of a beautiful 1940s tulip print I made a quilt out of long ago.

So pretty and cheerful, and I just love that these are going to be used in a preschool classroom!

Now on to shopping at home for fabric for the other five for this order!

Pretty Things From All Around

Seemed like a good time to highlight a few of the pretty, pretty things I've been running across lately, and to point out some lovely handmade crafters out there!

First of all, I just found this awesome store, KittyBBLove, which sells great little molded crayons, coloring books, cat-shaped chalkboards, and other goodies. I ordered a copy of their downloadable kitty coloring book and have hearted their cat-shaped crayons for Christmas. Because you know, we're all about cats here.


I've also got my eye on this as a potential Christmas present for my now also mouse-obsessed little one, from one of my favorite artists, BarkingBirdArt:

Sofie has several of her prints in her room already and I suspect this will be joining them before long.

And for those of you who love intricate stitchery, take a look at this little gem from Kale Handmade:

It's 1.25 by 1.5 inches. Amazing work!

I took advantage of someone else's free shipping special this weekend to order this gorgeous big bag from a seller in Paris named Ikabags - I can't wait until it gets here:


And for a sushi addict like me, the idea of having my own nice pair of chopsticks in a sweet little houndstooth chopstick cozy is just so fun - I want! Stocking stuffer, honey? From BLoveClothing:


Happy shopping!

A layoff, a reorg, and a long overdue promotion

Well, let's see, what's new?

A Layoff

I've laid off the diet coke once and again. Yes, I'm once again giving it up, mainly to try to get away from aspartame, which gives me headaches and makes me cranky and is really a horrible, nasty substance. I've been addicted to Diet Coke in legendary proportions for years, and given it up a few times along the way, but it never really sticks.

But here we go again, quitting it, which leaves me cranky and headachy and in dire need of something else to drink. Bleah.

I love diet coke. I love diet coke. I love diet coke.

The cranky and headachy is probably more due to the fact that a side effect of this project is that it cuts my caffeine intake way down, by accident. It's not that I don't like coffee, really, I just don't like it terribly well. I'll drink it sometimes, but it's nothing I want to make every morning and not something I have any desire to drink all day long. Real soda has too many calories (although I did suck down a non-diet Coke today out of desperation for caffiene when I realized my head was about to explode) and tea just seems like too much work.

Oy. I'm sucking down pellegrino today when I have a strong jones for carbonation, but it's a weak substitute. Bleah.

***
A Reorg

In other news, Sofie has decided that she will no longer answer to Sofie and will now only be addressed as Tutter. Mommy has been renamed Ojo, Daddy is Bear, and Grandpa Shult is Pip. These are all characters from the totally awesome Jim Henson series, Bear in the Big Blue House, which she's currently obsessed with.

Boy, does this kid stick to her guns. I haven't been addressed as Mommy in weeks. Even when she wakes up in the middle of the night, she yells, "Ojo! Ojo! I need you Ojo!" up the stairs. Her preschool teachers are corrected. And even at the doctor, yesterday, after she got her flu shot and was struggling hard not to cry, she managed this little exchange:

Nurse: "Oh, aren't you just the best little kid?"
Sofie: "I not a kid. I a mouse named Tutter."

How long will this last? I'm guessing a few months.

***
A Promotion

Sofie has a toy horse that her Dad and I goofily named "Bad Horse" in homage to the brilliant Dr. Horrible webcast we're in love with -- and because we thought it was pretty funny when she went along with it and even sang some of the lyrics in her tiny, little girl voice.

Alas, it's not to be any longer. Yesterday at naptime, she was quietly dressing and undressing bad horse when I left her for an hour of quiet play. When I returned, she loftily informed me that his name has been changed to Good Horse. She's sticking with it today, so I guess it's official - Bad Horse has earned a promotion. Pass along my congratulations!

In The Works - New Sock Monkey Medallions!

I’ve been working away in my studio the last two days on a new line of coffee sleeves – here’s a sneak peek on the process!

Like all my coffee sleeves, these started with a piece of fabric I just love – in this case a fabulous sock monkey print on a soft aqua background. There are six or so different monkeys on it, so you can expect to see a lot of different versions of this coffee sleeve.

I thought they looked just perfect with red, so the first step is to fuse each medallion onto a nice, polka-dotted red background strip to form the middle of each sleeve.

Then the harder question – what to use as a background? I’ve been loving this faux bois (woodgrain) cotton for a while and haven’t used it very much, except for the inside lining of some zip pouches, and I like the way brown looks with the monkey medallions so I decided to try it out. Very nice, I think! Here’s one waiting to be sewn together…

Yes, he’s pinned through the eyes, and I do realize that’s cruel, but with the interfacing behind it I didn’t want to leave visible marks elsewhere on it!

And after several more steps, they’re all finished up with their cozy red fleece backgrounds attached and a nice Bellflower Textiles label, just ready to be individually fitted to a coffee cup and hand sewn closed in the back.

They look happy, don’t you think?

And a couple of the finished products, now available in the shop! You can click on the pictures to go directly to the listing for these two fine fellows.

First, Our friend from above, in blue… he’s natty and very proud of his hat.

And one of his friends, in pink, sporting a jaunty birthday hat.

You can expect to see some of their friends showing up too over the next few days!

Giveaway today

Sheryll over at Skylar's Candy Clips is hosting a giveaway from my shop today - hop on over to her blog to enter for your chance to win any coffee cup currently in stock!



Thanks so much!

New website!

My fabulously talented friend Kate and I have been working on a commercial website for me for several months now, and I'm happy to announce that Bellflower Textiles is now live on the Web! Please come take a look at the result on my very own domain:

http://bellflowertextiles.com

Having my own website will let me do things like point all of my various online identities and marketing activities back to one central site, and it gives me more control over how my business shows up in search results, lets me collect addresses for my soon-to-be-launched newsletter, and just generally should help me direct a lot more traffic into my shop! And I've got a blog page there where I can post most of my shop news, so check in for frequent updates!

If you're an online seller, purchasing your own domain is definitely a good idea - it keeps someone else from grabbing your company name, and you may someday want to expand your efforts into a full e-commerce site that's not tied to any particular venue like etsy or artfire. Reserving a domain name is fairly inexpensive, and you can just redirect it to your primary selling site until you're ready to develop it further!

And, let me point you all to my friend Kate Witt's website - she runs her own consulting business creating sites for companies and individuals, and I know she really loves to work with small business owners! Her services are awesome and highly affordable and I just can't say enough positive things about the experience of working with her on this -- she's a total pro, and a lot of fun! She's also an etsy fanatic and has a whole page dedicated to how she can help Etsy shop owners get set up with sites of their own.

Thank you Kate!

A few recent goodies - and a giveaway

A little news about Bellflower Textiles!

First, I wanted to share that I'm just a few sales away from my 500th sale!! I'm very excited about this one! And to celebrate, the person who is my 500th buyer will get the zip pouch or coffee sleeve of their choice, free with their order! At the moment that I'm writing this I only need five more sales to cross that milestone - so you have a really good chance of being the one if you head over now for some Christmas shopping. :)


Second, I just wanted to share a few recent items from my store - I've started to make an expanded version of my pencil rolls designed for makeup brushes, and they're selling like hotcakes!

The makeup rolls differ from the pencil rolls in that they have varied-sized slots in them, for different size brushes, and most of them have a foldover flap on the top to protect your brushes from damage.










And there are lots of others available, so please take a look! Christmas shopping seems to have gotten started on etsy already as this month has really been hopping for me. I've posted probably fifty new items this month but things keep selling so fast that I'm getting nowhere near my goal of having 200 items in stock by October 1st.

Oh well. As I've said before, that's a nice problem to have.

Preschool report

So as noted previously, Sofie went off to school for the first time this week. We've been building up to this for a while - reading lots of books about preschool, visiting her classroom three or four times before school started up so she could meet the teachers and join in and play... and I guess it worked, because she's taken to it like a champ!

Despite her occasional tendency to cling to Mommy and not talk to anyone else, on her first day she walked right in, gave me a big hug, and sat down to play. No tears, no real anxiety, no problem. The teacher said she figured out the routine really easily and had fun the first day.

Sofie's only real comment to me that day was, "I didn't paint today!" I guess her preschool books led her to expect that preschool is one big finger-painting bacchanal. Maybe next time, kid.

On day two, she was more than happy to go back. I stayed for a few minutes to watch her do circle time with the other kids (about 10 boys and 3 girls, from what I can tell so far), and then came back a little bit early to peek in from the hall and watch them play ring-around-the-rosie and do some complicated game where they all held little stuffed rabbits and sang a song. Very cute!

She's doing awesome - the teacher said she's extremely comfortable with the classroom and is having a great time. I'm so proud of her!

And wow, is the worktime as great as I thought. Three hours feels like such a luxury, an embarrassment of riches. Monday I got something like eight things sewn for the shop in that time period AND got some of them photographed. Today, I had coffee with my friend Jen, ran errands, and STILL went home and got over an hour of hard sewing time in before I had to go back and pick her up.

So we're both adjusting well and so far, I think this school thing is working out great! Check back with me in week three, when the teachers have told us the real protests about all this going-to-school stuff often begins. Fingers crossed!

Off to school

More words later today, but for now just some quick pics from this morning - new sneakers, a backpack, and a really big grin:

Overheard tonight

Brett: Sofie, are you a boy or a girl?
Sofie: I'm a GROWNUP!

Heh.

Time for a change

The hard part of having your own business and being a mom is that you are literally always working. Bellflower Textiles may not be on the top sellers list (not yet, anyway - but good god, the top folks on there have 52,000 sales!) but for just over a year and coming up on my 500th sale pretty soon here, I feel like it's successful enough that I can call it a real business. It's paying a portion of our bills, it's profitable, and I'm working really really hard at it.

I mention this only because today, in a fit of decadence, I am officially NOT working while Sofie plays in her room for quiet time. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been able to allow myself this luxury in the last three months. I could pretty much count it on two fingers, including today.

Which is AWESOME - I'm so glad to see the business growing and thriving. But I'm tired, dude. And the other thing that's making me feel like I can take today off and just veg is that ... duh duh DUM...

PRESCHOOL STARTS MONDAY!

I'm of two minds about preschool. First, I'm very much feeling bittersweet about the whole thing. My little teeny baby is now a big kid of three who's going to go off on her own for three mornings a week and make new friends, play with her teacher, and have all kinds of new experiences that, for the very first time, don't directly involve me.

Which is wonderful, and especially important I think for an only child like her, and it's going to be fabulous. We've been visiting her school frequently over the last month and her teacher is warm and wonderful, and we just love it there.

But at the same time, it's a real transition point. The last three years of being home with her have been such an amazing time! And now that stage is over and the next stage is beginning and I have to admit, part of me wants to grab her chubby little buddha belly and hug her close and keep her all to myself for a little bit longer.

*sniff*

The other half of my brain, though, sees that for the first time in three years I will now have nine hours of uninterrupted work time, all to myself, on a completely reliable basis, every single week.

The old, pre-mommy me would look at that and say, "Nine hours? Big freaking deal."

But honestly, the last time I had nine hours of dedicated time to myself was probably September 1st, 2006 -- the day before Sofie was born. I've been building this business on 45 minutes here, 30 minutes there, two hours once in a while when I've had a childcare swap going on, an hour or so a day during naptime, 30 minutes in the evening on the nights when it's Brett's turn to put her to bed, etc. Totally random, grab-it-when-you-have it, work as fast as you can, make the most of each second -- wow. It's fun, but it's totally chaotic.

So today, I'm feeling a little less urgency than usual to go grab and squeeze every second of productivity I can from my afternoon. Because not only is tomorrow the weekend when I can usually count on Brett to give me a couple hours of time to work, next week is the start of my new improved schedule.

And with my new, improved, "I've been a mommy for three years and can now do twenty things in the time it used to take me to do two" mentality, I know those nine hours are going to feel like twenty in terms of how much I can suddenly get done.

So yay! And sigh. But yay! It's a new leaf for us both.

Works in progress

Just a little preview of some things I've started working on...

First off, I bought this amazing Japanese linen at a local store a month or so ago that featured rows and rows of these great little matryoshka dolls in various colors. I looked at them and thought, "Coffee sleeves!" And so one measly little yard came home with me - but there are dozens and dozens of little dolls on it.

Last night I finally got around to trying them out. First I fused some interfacing on the back and cut out various versions of the dolls, like the pink ones you see here:



Then the question became what to pair them with. I'm still in the midst of my linen obsession, and I liked the idea of a quiet background for them, so I pulled out some plain tan linen I also haven't used for months and cut a two inch strip...

And then they just cried out for some hand embroidery in kelly green. Because I cannot stop embellishing things. It's a good thing I don't have a bedazzler, that's all I have to say.



Sweet, aren't they? In the pic above you see the other two colors available in addition to the pink dolls from the first picture - red headscarfs, and green.

And finally, what to pair them with? I had an idea in mind, and old 1940s feedcloth fabric I have lots of, but what actually seemed like it worked the best to me was this mega-bright polka dot.



The cheerfulness of the background fabric just seemed to play nicely off the quiet linen insert and the happy colors of the dolls themselves. What do you think?


And of course I lined it in red. Because again, I'm all about bright.

Here's one on a cup:



And just as an experiment, I did make on on the original feedcloth fabric - I like that this is repurposed vintage fabric, honest to goodness 1940s stuff here. And the colors do work. But I just somehow like the polka dot better.



Any votes on which is better?

Of course, several of these are now listed in the store, and you'll be seeing more and more over the next few days as I finish up some more of them!