Horse appliqué rucksack

Livia, our youngest, is 2.5 years old and horse mad. She can regularly been seen trying to carry six horse figurines at the same time, not an easy thing to accomplish with such little hands. So I made her a rucksack to ease her load. I made the straps normal size and tied a knot so the bag can grow with her. She loves it.

I've been wanting to try appliqué for a little while and am happy with the way it turned out. I referred to  the Sew Liberated book for a how-to appliqué as the author Meg McElwee is the queen of this technique! Her lovely blog is here.

Next up I want to try freehand machine embroidery. Any tips or sites to recommend?

A family holiday with an uninvited guest

Hello hello, sorry for being away for so long. We were on a skiing holiday with my husband's family in the beautiful village of Les Gets, France. We're lucky in that it's only an hour's drive from our house.

We had a great week with beautiful blue skies but reeeeeally cold temperatures. My husband offered me an hour's private tuition with a ski instructor. By the end of the lesson I went down my first black piste! I was a very happy bunny as it felt like a big achievement.

The unwelcome guest? Chickenpox for Livia. Grrrrrr. Turned up on the Friday just before we left and finished the Saturday after! Ho hum, at least she's had it now.

Noah's turn from today. At least it's half term and snowing outside. We are in complete hibernation mode.

Sometimes I surprise even myself

This working at home lark with a toddler in tow isn't easy to figure out and recently I've been getting frustrated at how little time I have to sit at my sewing machine. I miss creating my bags! 

So I've been doing a bit of research about how to pin down exactly what I want to focus on this year for Rose and Lula and how to then get organised with that information. I found these two links really helpful:

• 12 business lessons for 2012
• Balancing work and kids for stay at home parents

After my research I took myself off for a coffee, which already felt like a huge step forward, and that's when the ideas started pouring onto the page.

Source: Katie Blair via Maria's pinterest board

In just an hour (it would seem I am very efficient without the aforementioned toddler in tow) I managed to jot down lots of ideas for new products. I also did a business plan for Rose and Lula, writing down what I want to achieve by this time next year and the things I need to do to go about meeting those objectives. This was a really interesting exercise for me and even helped me see a little bit into 2013! 

Lastly, I had another look at our family's timetable for the week and tried to see where I can carve out some quality time with my sewing machine. This has resulted in sending the small one off to garderie on a different morning so that she can also have lunch there, which she loves so we're both happy.

When I got home I realised I didn't know how to turn my lovely lists into precise goals with deadlines, so my husband who's a project manager came up with a simple post it note system for me. You have a To Do, an In Progress and a Done column and you put your post it notes, colour coded by objective, in the To Do column, urgent ones at the top down to non urgent at the bottom. Then you pick one and work on it, moving it along the columns as and when. I really like the idea of having a Done column so you can see your progress.

Speaking of which, I'm going to try to add time estimates to the post it notes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes etc so that when the children are home and I find myself with a bit of time (haha), I can take a task according to time scale. I am hoping in this way I'll feel like I've accomplished a few more business things in the day.

For the sake of transparency, and so that my real life friends reading this don't think I've turned into someone else, I feel I should point out that:

• I put off filling up the car with petrol this morning only to have urgently find a fuel station this afternoon, worried I would break down with both kids in the car.

• I made a menu plan and shopping list for the week last night and put the shopping bags ready by the front door. Needless to say I promptly managed to leave both them and the list at home this morning.

What can I say, I should be in my own "In Progress" column.

List week part two - Sewing goals

The Christmas markets were all about seeing a) if any of my products would sell and b) which products people were interested in. It was a heart warming feeling to wake up on Christmas morning and think of the children  opening their Rose and Lula tote bags. I really hope they liked them!

In the downtime of the holidays, I ordered lots of new materials with the following goals in mind:

• Design and make new rucksacks
• Re-learn appliqué and sew some items using this technique which I especially love
• Make a summer dress for my daughter
• Work out key products for Rose and Lula and sew more of them with new materials

I also need to type up my patterns as at the moment they are scribbled into a notebook, half in inches and half in centimetres! It's a system that worked fine when I was making lots of items but if I go back to it now I'm a bit lost.

After the frenetic pace of getting stock together for the Christmas markets, it feels rather strange now to have no specific time goals to work towards. I need to see if there are any Spring markets on the horizon or if we can exhibit (with my friends) in someone's house. 

Do you have any sewing objectives for 2012?

List week part one

I love this time of year for reflecting what went well last year and how to make things better for this one. My birthday is also tied up in the start of the year, so that makes two measures of where I've been and where I want to go.

All in all, 2011 was really the year where our little family emerged from the baby haze (our youngest is now 2.5) and I started to feel energised and ready for new challenges. After doing the life changing Unravelling course by Susannah Conway in 2010, I'd already figured out I wanted to go back to my childhood loves of creating, and my ever supportive husband bought me a sewing machine for Christmas last year. Little did we know where this amazing present was going to take us! It was such a sense of achievement to go from receiving a sewing machine to be selling my wares at two Christmas markets the following year.

From left to right: Petra (Pebbles and Bloom), me and Silke (Lulu's Wardrobe)

Other things that went really well last year are:

• I opened up to new friendships which have brought me lots of happiness as well as adventures (see my two partners-in-crime above)
• I ran 6K for Unicef in Geneva thanks to another new friend and started doing yoga
• I learnt how to stop planning and start living in the moment (so much easier said than done, it's an ongoing process)
• We got ourselves not one but three babysitters and started having date nights again
• The kids are both happy and healthy
• I started menu planning thanks to this down-to-earth lady, so shopping is slightly less of a chore and the number of meltdowns (by me and/or the kids) at dinnertime have drastically reduced.
• I started a blog and am very happy to be here!

Next up, my sewing goals for 2012..

Market update and a lovely video

Hello everyone,

I'm so sorry for not updating before. We have lost our camera - gahhhhhh - so I have nothing to show you after the two Christmas markets.

I can happily report though that both were a fantastic experience. The learning curve was pretty steep from making business cards, pricing, display and packaging and I loved every minute of it. The best top tip I can give from learning the hard way is NOT to stay up late trying to make new creations the night before the market - it leads to lots of mistakes, consequential swearing and resulting items that I ended up leaving at home through the shame of it. Ho hum, I'll know for next time.

There were a few items that sold really well, and some that completely sold out(!!) so that's really helping me to pinpoint my key products. I also found that the more items I make, the more ideas I have to make other things. I'd heard about this "creativity breeds creativity" theory before, but never actually managed to allocate so much time to creating before.

Since the markets I am left with feelings in equal measure of pure excitement about where I am going with this dream of mine to work from home and of achievement too - I have to keep pinching myself that I actually made and sold items at a market!

For now I plan on spending the next few days chilling and celebrating with my family. They have been so supportive with my dreams and I am so grateful to have them.

I wish you a wonderful holiday time with your friends and family. I shall leave you with this lovely (short) video which I found on sense and grace's blog. I live in hope for a similar Christmas morning in our house :)

Christmas Fair Countdown

On the 3rd and 4th December I'll be taking part with my two talented friends Silke and Petra in our first Christmas market. It's exciting as it's in our village and will be our first public outing, which also makes it nerve racking as we will know people there. I feel it would be easier to sell my wares to people I don't know? Anyway, at worst, as we are three, we can sell each others' things. I would have no problem showing off Silke's beautiful clothes and Petra's gorgeous jewellery.

Anyway, back to the market and the sewing machine has seemingly (seamingly? haha) been working non stop. Luckily my mother-in-law was here over the last ten days and she took the children in hand while I could concentrate on bag making. First off are the totes for kids:

These are the ones I made using a production line system - by first doing all the cutting, then sewing all the handles etc. Although each bag is slightly different I've found that this is not my favourite way of sewing - I drifted off from what I was doing and felt less creative. I much prefer to do a bag at a time and see where my creativity takes me although this is obviously not the most efficient way of getting the bags made. The bird tote bag below is for adults and is an example of my preferred one-bag-at-a-time method - from the exterior fabric to the lining, from the zip colour to the inside zip fabric, I loved selecting them all as the bag came together.

My son fell in love on the spot with the dinosaur fabric - he even commissioned his own tote and chose his lining! He has since been carrying it everywhere with him, with his favourite toys stashed inside, which makes me really happy.

Are you making anything for a Christmas market and if yes, how are you at selling your own wares?