just a quick note to say there are new bags in the shop! and two bears too.

have a great weekend!

I have stocked my little shop in quite some time, but I’m trying to make it look presentable again. There are four new kiddy messenger bags in some pretty fantastic prints: Heather Ross (who I hear won’t be designing fabric for a while–damn!), Alexander Henry, and the Japanese line Kokka, most of them lined with vintage gingham.  I also made the little bear from that awesome Kokka forest print. His name is Julien and he is the first bear of mine stuffed with 100% wool. I need to look around a bit more for wool stuffing, because damn it’s expensive, but so much nicer to work with than sucky poly fil (anyone have a good wool hook up?).  I’m moving to use only natural materials for the stuff I sell. The bags are now lined with cotton twill, because interfacing is weird and god only knows what it’s made of. I switched to using  cotton thread a while ago, mostly because it just sews so much nicer than polyester thread. And now the stuffing is wool, but I do use foam for my diggers and tugboats and I just don’t know what natural material could give them that same structure.  Anyone have any ideas? I will always use vintage and thrifted fabric even though I’m sure most have some polyester in them, but their coolness factor makes up for that. right?

I picked up two suitcases in the last few weeks.  The big one from the trash and the little one from the good thrift store (not the one with all the hipster employees that snag all the good stuff).  The big one doesn’t look so exciting, but it’s yellow with white polka dots on the inside.  I left it open in the sun for a couple days and all but a little of that old basement smell is gone.  They are both for dress up, which is big in our house these days.  Inspired by the book The Creative Family, I made a little area in the kid’s room especially for dressing up.

There hasn’t been too much action there yet, but my daughter tends to put absolutely everything on at once and that gets a little hot in the summertime.  A couple times I’ve found the little one sitting in the chair right in front of the mirror having his snack.  It’s pretty damn cute. These are old, trash picked mirrors and it’s probably a bad idea to have them in the kid’s room, but oh well.  Our house is so small I really have no choice but to always have my eye on the kids. They will crash and break and then we’ll put something else up. In the meantime, it’s bear slippers and tutus on your head (and nothing else).

I’m still working on things for the shop.  I made a few pairs of pajama pants out of pillowcases for the smaller set (sizes 3-6 months, 2-3T, and 4-5T).  Making pjs out of vintage sheets and pillowcases is the way to go.  They are so soft and so perfect for the summertime.  So hop on over and check em out.

just a quick post to say there are some felt stones in my shop.

a quick note to tell you there are new diggers and a couple bears are for sale in my shoppe.  The sale went well, thanks for asking.  It’s hard to sell handmade things right next to a secondhand sale, but I made more than I spent (at the sale) so we’ll just call that a success.  And it was such a treat to see how people react to my stuff, so I’m sure I’ll do it again.  There will be pillowcase dresses and kiddy messenger bags and toy bags in the shop as soon as I get my shit together, which I’m guessing will be tuesday.  see you then.