Kindergarten Auction Art Project: Fabric Tree

Hi Angel!

I finally finished the auction art project for Ben's class and wanted to share. I am really happy with how it turned out!

I wrote a whole behind-the-scenes post on my shop blog Jenny Bartoy ~ Handmade Designs where you can see a bunch of photos and read details on the process. Meanwhile here are a few pictures of the finished project!










What do you think? I sure hope it will bring in some money at the auction. Fingers crossed!

What's Been Keeping Me Busy...

Hi Angel!

I can't believe how this year is flying so far. I owe you an update on the crafty front! I have been so busy with my little business, which is great. I feel like things have finally kicked into a smooth, steady gear. I have had a constant stream of projects to work on, mostly custom orders. (See below for a few examples!) But eek, it's hard to stay afloat on all fronts and I feel like my blog posting has fallen by the wayside, along with my socializing. I'll try to catch you up here!

First, I wanted to show you the little Valentines I made with the kids for Valentine's Day last week. I had noticed this adorable lollipop-holding photo idea on Design Mom a while back and pinned it. The weather was horribly rainy and gloomy in the days leading up to V-day, so I had to take indoor photos of the kids, which of course were slightly blurry. They turned out pretty cute though, and were a big success with their friends!



Ben has a little friend named Angel in his class!



In the spirit of Valentine's Day, I also made some heart-y table runners for my shop. I love how these turned out, fun!






A few weeks ago, I scored a whole bunch of new fabrics from both Drygoods Design Online and Hawthorne Threads. Here are some photos to make you drool. There is some Stamped, some Bella, some Notting Hill, and more loveliness. Pretty much all of this is going into projects for my shop, though I'm thinking of saving some of that Notting Hill sateen to make a pillow for our living room.






Here are some of the custom orders I completed recently: a book cover for our friend Carrie's bible study tome, some quilted table runners, and a custom set of coasters.








Also, I am in charge of the auction art project for Ben's kindergarten class. Their curriculum is project-based, and their winter project has been "Fabrics through the world". How fortunate! As you can imagine, I've been invited to do show and tell a couple of times.

For the auction project, we've been working on a large piece of fiber art, involving fabric. I had visions of branching out from my usual burlap art and doing something edgy and cool. But all the feedback I received from the adults involved has been to stick to the type of stuff I've made from my shop, so the project will involve a tree and some birdies. Here's a glimpse at my prep work. I'll share more soon!!




I think that about rounds up all that's been keeping me busy lately. How about you? What is occupying your hands lately? What fabrics are you drooling over? What projects are getting you excited? I'd love to know!

Craft Fair Tips From a First-Timer

Hi Angel,

I am sorry to hear you're sick. I hope it's a quick bug! We're staying in this weekend, for the most part. The kids both have a cold and it's sleeting outside, so we're painting ornaments, making a gingerbread house and will probably bake Christmas cookies tomorrow. After the horror of yesterday, I just want to snuggle my babies this weekend.

Let's focus on something positive, shall we? As you know, I participated in my first craft fair here in Seattle last weekend, the Holiday Arts + Crafts Open House, and thought I would share photos and tips from my experience! It went so well, I was super happy.




Do some research and prepare

First off, if it's your first time doing a craft fair, do some research and prepare! I am so thankful you reminded me of that, Angel. I looked up the tips you had mentioned on Lupin Handmade and from there, read more via this list of links on Handmadeology. Extremely helpful! I made lists, I made plans, and felt empowered.

A Few Table Runners

Hello!!!

I'm coming up for air to check in. I can't believe it's been 10 days since my last post. November is always my crazy busy month, prepping for the holidays, and now that I have a little business, it is even nuttier.

I've been prepping for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I also signed up for an art sale here in Seattle (December 8, 12:30-6:30PM at Red Square Yoga, come see me!) and getting ready for it is taking away every ounce of free time I might have had left. Fun stuff, though! I have so many things prepped and cut, and now need to SEW SEW SEW!!!




I have started listing some things from my Fall-Winter collection in the shop, mostly table runners (see above). A couple of months ago, I came up with a design for my own home (see below) and liked it so much, I made this bunch to sell on Etsy. You can see photos here on my biz blog and of course, in the Table Runners section of my shop.

Below is what I made for my house. I love the Bella collection by Lotta Jansdotter so much, I wanted to make a center piece for our dining room table with it. Grey is currently my favorite color (and the color of our dining room chair cushions!), so I decided to showcase that simple dotted print and bind it in natural linen. I added a layer of batting and quilted the runner with a large zigzag and it turned out great!








If you'd like one of these for yourself, there is one in my shop! It is slightly more rectangular to fit most tables.




While I was on a roll with table runners, I decided to make one for our window shelf / nature table. That spot drives me crazy. It hosts the kids' collections of shells, rocks, pinecones and acorns (depending on the season) along with small seasonal crafts and small plants. This shelf is a scratched up wood board, painted white, and I've wanted to cover it for ages.




While my natural linen and the batting were out, I cut pieces to size and quilted the layers with wavy lines. I then bound the whole thing with a small print from Rashida Coleman-Hale's Washi collection.








I love how simple and crisp it is. Perfect for showcasing the kids' treasures!

All right, on this note, I've got to get back to the sewing machine while Henry is still at preschool! I hope to check in soon with more updates.

What are you guys up to lately? How are you getting ready for the upcoming holidays? I'd love to hear from you in the comments, and if you'd like, please share links to your crafty projects!

Winner of the Quilt Blocks Shop Challenge!

Good morning!

I am so excited to be one of the winners of the Quilt Blocks Shop Challenge on The Long Thread!!!!! Ellen just featured me and my projects in a post on her blog.




It was such fun to create projects for this challenge. Her Quilt Blocks fabric line for Moda was wonderful to work with: a good mix of simple and intricate designs, modern and clean-lined with bright bold colors.

Go check out The Long Thread to see my little feature as well as the lovely projects made by the other two winners! Huge thanks to Ellen for organizing this challenge and selecting me as a winner.




You can see more of the projects I made for the Quilt Blocks Shop Challenge here.

Have you made anything with this fabric line? I'd love to see!

What I Made For The Quilt Blocks Shop Challenge

Hi Angel!

I hope you're having a good week so far. I miss you! It's hard to believe that less than a week ago, we all spent such an awesome day together. I'm now back to the routine in Seattle, with preschool, laundry, appointments, etc. It's been so busy and the weather has been disgusting. The HEAT came on 2 mornings this week! I kid you not. Brrrrrrrrrr.

The day we visited you last week was the deadline for the Quilt Blocks Shop Challenge organized by Ellen Luckett Baker of The Long Thread. In a nutshell: make things for your shop with Ellen's Quilt Blocks fabric collection, she will pick 3 favorite contestants, feature them on her blog and host their ad in her sidebar for 3 months. Pretty cool! Since I was planning on making things with her collection anyway, I got to work!






You know me, I can't ever do things half-way, so I put together a collection of SIX "quilt block" pillows using the Quilt Blocks fabric, as well as one table runner. I juxtaposed Ellen's modern fabrics with natural linen (I guess that's my "signature" combo by now).

I scrambled to finish everything and take photos before we left on our trip to Nashville. Then I forgot to submit photos to the challenge Flickr pool until the very last second! I entered the challenge in the last few minutes of May 31, after we got home from spending that day with your family! But, it turns out Ellen had forgotten about her own challenge too and she extended the deadline to June 11 (so I might have time to make a few more things, ha!). So if you want to enter the challenge, there is still time! (And yes! That is my pillow in Ellen's blog post, whee!)

Here are photos of the projects I made and entered in the challenge. You can see more picson Flickr, and I'm starting to list them in my shop. What do you think??

Recent Custom Projects

Man, I'm so creative with post titles sometimes, ha ha! Sorry I couldn't come up with anything more clever. I did, however, want to show you a few custom projects I recently finished. I posted about them in more detail on my website, but here is a little overview.

For the anniversary of her friend Ann's sister's death, my wonderful and loyal customer Alli asked me to make a custom piece to commemorate that sad event. It was an emotional process, but I love the upcycled burlap art piece that resulted.






[More photos and details here.]


A friend of mine from grad school recently moved back to New York and asked me to make a cloth pad for the antique desk in the studio she's renting. She requested Marimekko fabric and we selected a bold red print. It was such fun (and a bit nerve-wracking) to work with this beautiful fabric.

With each new binding project, I improve my skills and the mitered corners are near perfect on this one. I was really pleased with the result. It's so striking, it could be hung as wall art, don't you think? I kind of want one for the huge white wall in our stairway.








[More photos and details here.]


The most recent e-reader cover I made was for a lovely lady named Lindsey who showed extreme patience while I dealt with sewing machine troubles (and an exchange for a brand new one!). To thank her for her graciousness, I made her a matching little zipper pouch.






[More photos and details here.]


I love custom orders! They are challenging and push me to think out of my usual creative box. However, it's time to focus on making things for my shop on Etsy which has been pretty quiet for the last couple of months! I'll share some works in progress very soon!!

If you feel so inclined, please visit my website/blog Jenny Bartoy ~ Handmade Designs or "like" me on Facebook. I'd love to make some new friends!

And if you haven't yet, go enter our giveaway for the Stash Happy book trio along with some fabric and felt here, part of the wonderful Giveaway Day on Sew Mama Sew!

Learning Lessons

Hi Angel!

I wrote this post last night, thinking we were finally emerging from what we have lovingly dubbed "Barf Fest" around these parts. My poor babies have been sick with a vicious stomach bug for the last 4 days. I have gotten intimately acquainted with my washing machine, as you can imagine. Blech. So done with this yuckiness! The boys seem to feel better this morning (knock on wood) unfortunately, just in time for me to get sick! Noooooo! Cross your fingers that this is short-lived. How are the sanding and painting and packing going on your end? I bet you can't wait to move back into your beautiful "new" house!

The past few weeks have been a bit disheartening business-wise. Opening a shop on Etsy right before the holiday rush last fall, I got sucked into a whirlwind of hand-making, selling, connecting, creating. It was so exciting. And then, of course, things settled down for this new little business and the pace of projects and interest in my work has mellowed out. It is both a blessing and a curse. I miss the excitement but I also welcome the lowered levels of stress. However, I have also encountered some unhappy firsts recently -- challenges and lessons.

I mentioned the other day that my little sheep nursery artwork was never delivered by the post office. It remains a mystery (the USPS website tracked it as delivered but it never made it to its recipient) and it was heartbreaking. I finally finished the re-do, and it is quite close to the original though it was hard to muster the same enthusiasm in the creative process. The irony here of course is that I had not insured the first shipment. Why not? I don't know, But it was a lesson learned the hard way!


And then, there's this new custom order for a Kindle cover, for a lovely lady in Alaska! She selected the modern owl print and the green coordinate. I got it cut, assembled and sewn. It was coming together beautifully and then, as I was top-stitching around the cover -- the very last step! -- the thick layers got stuck in the feed dogs of my sewing machine. The thread got horribly tangled so I had to use the seam ripper then try stitching again a few times. Even though I was careful, this process scratched the fabric at both corners of the front cover! The horror! Obviously, this cover no longer meets my quality standards, so I now have to re-make it for my customer.






I am so annoyed with myself but I'm not sure what else I could have done. I changed the needle on the sewing machine after the layers got stuck, but it didn't change a thing. Perhaps I should have used an even higher number needle...? For the next cover, I am definitely removing the seam allowance from the interfacing to reduce the bulkiness of the layers.

Thank goodness, there have been successes too. Recently, I completed this piece of custom burlap artwork for loyal customer Alli. She requested a piece featuring 2 birds to commemorate her 5th wedding anniversary with her husband, plus a 3rd smaller bird to represent their daughter. I had been wanting to do a birds-on-a-wire design for a while and love how this one came out!! You can read more about it on my website.


And finally, here's a happy first: I'm SO excited about getting to work with gorgeous Marimekko fabric for a custom project. A girlfriend of mine from grad school is back living in New York after several years in Norway. She asked me to create a custom cloth pad for a special antique desk she inherited from her father's best friend, using a red Marimekko print. Here's the one we agreed on:



Isn't it gorgeous?!

Tell me, have you learned lessons the hard way while building a handmade business -- or any business for that matter? I'd love to hear. And how about that Marimekko fabric? Would you be as giddy as I am?

Getting Things Done...

Hello friend! Time keeps slipping by in fast-forward, it seems. I've been meaning to post a little update for days and just can't find a moment. Right this minute, I have one kid down for nap, one kid "reading" to himself in the living room, loads of laundry churning and a cup of reheated coffee in front of me. Time to steal a few minutes and show you what I've been up to!

Mostly, I've been busy working on stuff for my shop on Etsy and finishing a custom order. The items for my shop are patchwork pouches (I showed you the WIPs a couple of weeks ago). I'm pretty happy with how they turned out! I especially love the green and purple ones with the contrasting linings and charcoal zippers, I think I'll make more.