Smaller baskets

I recently took some new fabric baskets up to Explore Park. They have been selling baskets I make in the visitor's center.

  

When I arrived, the baskets were displayed on this ladder. I thought it was a fun display.

  

They did mention moving the baskets to a different location as I had brought up more .

We discussed lowering prices on the baskets to sell more and sell them faster.  But, the profit margin is so small, I decided to try making smaller baskets instead.

  

I tried some much smaller baskets.  But it is too hard to manipulate the smaller ones under the sewing machine.

  

They were also too small for the charms I like to add to each basket.  The little baskets were cute, but took almost as long to make as the bigger baskets.

  

I tried a mid-size basket. (At this point I'm feeling like Goldilocks and looking for JUUUST right.).

  

The mid-size baskets are pretty cute, but I haven't gotten up to speed on making the new size, so I am only saving about an hour on each one.

  

I am also finding size creep.  I don't want have too many different price points, so I want to have each one be a similar size.  I find my self adding a few rows of coils on each new basket I make.   I need to be careful about that.  I have made so many baskets, that my muscle memory sometimes takes over from my conscious mind.  Removing coils to make a smaller basket seems silly.

This one is the biggest of my mid-size baskets. But I really like it.

  

I'm liking these new baskets and will take a few up in the new year to see how they do.  I'm not sure how many I should make until I see how many sell versus the larger ones.

  

Quilting Again

Years ago I bought what is known as a jelly roll when my favorite quilt shop was going out of business.  A jelly roll is  a bunch of fabrics that all work together, cut into strips for quilting or other projects.  Then I started making my fabric baskets and the jelly roll sat on a shelf in my craft room.

I have sufficient baskets, so I decided to take a shot at a new quilt.

My friend, Doris, showed me a fun way to use jelly rolls to make a lot of fabulous quilting squares.  This technique was originated by 3 Dude's Quilting by way of Missouri Quilting.  You can see the video here

  

Take four strips and sew them together.

  

Cut them into squares.  Place one square with the strips running vertically.

  

Then cover that square, with the right sides together, and the top square running horizontally.

  

Sew a 1/4 inch seam around all four sides.

  

Cut the square from corner to corner, making four triangles.

  

Press them open and that is the basis of the finished square.

  

I have been having fun trying different ways of putting these squares together.  I have tried using two squares from different strips.


  

Next I tried two squares from the same strip set.

  

I like them all!

I have quite a few finished squares and will spend then next few weeks making up all of my strip sets into quilt squares.

  

This technique is quick and I am having fun putting them together.

  

Sadly, now I need to go back to the fabric store to but the rest of the fabric to finish the quilt top.  It is always a risk going to a fab ricin's store.  I may need to buy some extra fabric for more baskets.

Etsy Site

I am in the process of setting up an Etsy site to sell some of my baskets.  Slow internet and slow brain are making this an arduous process.  I even downloaded new photo editing software, but I need a child to teach me how to use it.

As of this time, I have three baskets listed.  I'll try to upload another one today or tomorrow. I also need to make more as I have a craft show coming up in October and I need to have a lot of stock for that.  I have sent 10 baskets to a friend in California and she will try to sell some at the craft fairs where she sells other items.

I have named the site SgfCreations.  I would have like to make it two words, but that is not allowed on Etsy.  Would you like to see my Etsy site?  I would love some input.  Go check it out and let me know what you think.  I need more photos on the site and will be working on that in the coming days.

Ocean Series

I wanted to make a basket for someone who lives close to the ocean.  I searched for some fabric that reminded me of waves and found this blue green fabric with silver highlights.  It reminded me of the color within a wave, with the sunlight glinting off the water.

  

I looked for, and found, a bright white with some movement to represent the foamy crest of the waves.  

  

I finished the basket with a starfish charm.  I liked it so much I decided to make another basket with an ocean theme.

  

The first basket represented a cresting wave.  The next basket will represent the colors of the ocean from very deep and up to the surface.  Many people have been to the beach and noticed the differing colors from where the water is shallow and out where it is deeper.

I grew up in Southern California and spent my childhood at the beach, even living on my sailboat for a time in my wild and crazy youth.  I lived for several years in the Pacific, including Hawaii and Tonga.  I have snorkeled, gone scuba diving, boogie boarded and sailed in many parts of the world.  I love the ocean.  I wanted to make a basket that explored some of these feeling and colors.

  

The right side of this fabric has gold curlicues and isn't right.  But the inside is a mix of dark blues and is perfect for the bottom of the basket.

The rest of the basket is an ever changing mix of batiks in shades of blues and greens, with designs to represent the seaweed and other plants growing in the oceans.

  

The top of the basket has the light blue green fabric with the white from the first basket.  I completed the basket with a mix of small, polished, blue stones for coral and a seahorse and clam shell peeking out of my miniature reef.

  

Do you think this is a good representation of the ocean?  I am really liking this exploration and am already planning another basket.

Decisions

I took a few days off from making baskets.  I have bags and bins of fabric.  But I was getting no inspiration.  So I went to Jo Ann's fabric.  I know.  I KNOW!  I have no business going there.  But I did.  I went to my supplier.

I was walking past the batik section.  I really like working with batiks.  Nothing caught my eye.  Later I went past the same shelf, but going in a different direction.  It is strange how looking at something from a different perspective changes your perception.  I pulled out one I liked.  Then I found another that went with the first. INSPIRATION!

  

I pulled another three bolts of fabric and eagerly waited my turn at the cutting table.  Then drove home and started cutting.

  

This one is from the two batiks.  I thought the teals went well with this silver arrow and turquoise bead decoration.

  

Next I am going to work with this midnight blue universe fabric with pops of yellow stars.  Even  before I start o. a basket, I start thinking about what embellishment I might want to use.  I like these silver charms.  But the beads of different colored stones is also a possibility.

  

The large gold heart locket works nicely with the yellow stars.  I guess I will have to wait and see what I feel like when I finish the basket. That is part of the fun, trying to make all the elements work together.

  

Stockpiling

I have sold a few baskets.  I am taking advantage of the winter lull in the B&B to make a lot more baskets  I am also trying different shapes and ways of finishing the baskets.

For the basket on the left, I cut some of the ducks from the fabric and fused them onto the outside of the basket.

 

The basket on the right has a pronounced V shape that I like.

 

I liked the shape so much that I made this one, also.  This basket it a mix of reds with silver accents.  To finish it I added silver thread around the top and used a silver bead and attached an  inspirational dangle.  You can't get more inspirational than tell one to inspire!.  I think it is striking.

Patriotic Heart

I wanted to try one more basket pattern before I went back to making my favorite ones to sell.  This one is heart shaped.  I found the pattern in It's A Wrap II, by Susan Breier. 

 

The hardest part of this basket is keeping the heart shape and then sewing in the tight corners.  I won't bore you with the techniques to make it more triangular, as they are in the book, but it took a lot more time than my favorite baskets and this would make selling it a bit more problematic as the price would have to be higher. I may take the different baskets with me when I go to a craft fair, but I don't have any idea of how to price them.

 

I still have a few bags of fabric all ready to use on my baskets, so what did I do?  You guessed it.  I went to a quilt shop!

 

I like Jo Ann's and Michaels for things I need for my hobby/retirement fund.  (Just kidding.  I am not making big money.)  But I really love some of the fabulous fabric you can get in quilt stores but  The Old Trinity Schoolhouse quilt shop closed and I hadn't been to another in Roanoke.  We were bored and so we went on an excursion.

 

I got some beautiful fabrics.  Some of these will be the only fabric in the basket and some will be used together to make a basket.  Then I needed to get some thread.  They had thread at the quilt shop, but I had a coupon for 50% off at JoAnn's, so that's where we went.  I like the larger sizes of thread I can get at JoAnn's.  It is awful to run out of thread in the middle of a project and have to go out to the store.  It is an hour and a half round trip in the car for a $5.00 purchase.  So I hope I have enough.

One of these days I will buy one of those boards with slanted pegs for holding thread and mount it on the wall in front of my sewing machine.  Oh, wait.  Cats.  Hmmm.  I may rethink that.

 

Look at the fabric and then look at the thread.  The thread cost almost as much as the fabric, before I used the coupon.  Does this make sense?  Fabric is made from thread.  A LOT of thread.  How can this be?

I am getting excited to see how these baskets turn out!

Yarn baskets

My cousin Saja lives in Tennessee and gave me a commission before Christmas.  She wanted a couple of baskets that she could use for her knitting.  They had to be bigger than my usual baskets and have a loop to pull the yarn through.  The loop was to prevent the yarn from tangling.  I have done other loops before, as a decorative swoosh, and I liked the idea of doing some for a specific purpose.

Even though Saja had specific design elements, she left the colors and other details up to me.

 

I started by cutting some fabric that I thought went together well in strips.  I stirred a pile of strips with my fingers until I could see that I would like the final outcome. 

 

Then I started assembling the first basket.  I chose blues and greens that reminded me of the ocean on a sunny day.  We both grew up in California and spent many happy days running along sandy beaches and playing in the surf.

 

To finish off the first basket and provide a loop for yarn, I made an "S" with the tail of the basket. I just happened to have a silver "J" and included that in the center of the final swirl to represent her name.  Saja is named after my grandmother and SHE was named after her aunts. Two of her aunts were Sarah and Jane.  The first two letters of their names became Saja.

 

The second basket is in shades of pink.  This is in honor of Saja and my sister (her cousin) Rosalind and their battle with breast cancer.  Happily, Saja beat her cancer and sadly, Roz did not.  I left a bigger loop in case she uses some fat, nubby yarn.  Then I added some BLING , cause Saja likes her some shiny!

 

I sent her a picture of the finished products of her commissions  She says she likes them and wondered if I would mail them or hold them hostage for her to come and get them.  I like that idea.

Come for a visit, Saja and get these baskets!  We'll visit a local yarn shop and an acquaintance that is raising llamas for wool.  Sounds like spring break is covered!

Sewing Pottery II

 

I have made a second pot using strips of fabric wrapped around clothesline.  I learned this technique in the book, Sewing Pottery by Machine.  I have discovered two things.

1.  These are not terribly difficult, but they are terribly time consuming. 

2.  Because of 1., I wont be making any more of these anytime soon.

 

The basket I chose to make has three pieces.

 

The way you make these baskets with a hole in the top is to use a flat disc the size of the hole you need.  In this case it is a 2 inch disc, the one in blue.

There is a bit of fiddling to make sure the opening of the bottom piece matches exactly to the opening of the middle piece.

Then you use a seam ripper to remove the flat disc.  I needed two flat discs for this project, so after I removed the one from the middle piece, I used it for the top piece.

 

That is the quickest part and still took parts of two days.

 

Then the time consuming, finger poking began.  Basically it involves sticking your thumb and forefinger inside the hole on the top while holding a threaded needle.  A very long and sharp needle.  I had to poke it through many times to find the exact spot to stitch.  It needed to look as much like the machine stitching on the rest of the basket as I could manage.  Then I poked it back through the project, a much easier thing, because now I could see what I was doing, right?

Well, the stitch placement was easier, but the reaching in to get the needle provoked many words followed by exclamation points.  We'll stick with ouch!, shall we?

 

The top piece was sewn on much quicker, but still took close to an hour. 

 

At some future date I may add some embellishments around this pot, but that will have to wait.  I have spent DAYS on these sewn pots and while I like them, I need to get back to making fabric baskets to sell. 

 

I already have a commission to make a couple for my cousin.  She wants them large enough to hold a ball of yarn and with a loop to pull the yarn through so it won't get tangled.  That seems like a fun and worthy project! 

I still need to finish my Etsy site and start posting baskets, but I just want to make one of the baskets for Saja and see how that goes.  I'll keep you posted.