I know it is cold when…

…I start getting orders for Winter Sling Things and the mad Christmas rush starts in earnest.

Two orders this week and a little purchase, out of the blue, from Folksy too! I am a bit chuffed about the Folksy sale of a little purse because it must mean that someone was searching for a purse, looked at hundreds of them and chose mine!

Winter Sling Thing sales don’t amaze me so much because people find my ebay listings and Folksy shop by googling for stuff like “fleece cover for sling” and then following the link.

I think it has taken Folksy a while to hit its stride and in the year or so I have been on there it has changed quite a bit and got a lot more coverage here and there too. I have been a very bad Folksy shopper and only ever bought one thing so I’m setting a really bad example to other shoppers! I bought a print from this shop for the girls for Christmas last year. I am ashamed to say that I still haven’t had it framed yet! I must do that this month.

So today I cleared the floor to unroll and cut some super snuggly chocolate brown fleece and for the first time I’ve been able to sew a little tag onto the Things. It can’t be seen when the Thing is being used because I hate that kind of branding all over stuff but it has Orange & Green on one side and the design registration number on the other.

Here’s a mad close-up

I’ve been sewing some tiny weeny cross stitch pictures for the girls which will also need framing at some point… I thought it would be nice to sew something by hand for a change so when I saw these on sale in our favourite shop in February I paid for and pocketed two while they were distracted by the beads and jewels at the other end of the shop. It has been a labour of love to get just one finished . Just the outline of this one took me three hours! Perhaps doing this whilst watching The Killing (with subtitles) wasn’t the smartest decision, but anyhooo

That square of fabric is just 5″ x 5″ and the biggest box is onnly about an inch and a half wide. One pub night with the home ed ladies and one night of tv watching later I have got it all coloured in as per the picture so I have started on number two which is a bell in two shades of yellow. What was I thinking? I am so glad I started stitching at the start of December and didn’t leave it till Christmas Eve to get started. Nothing else for Christmas has been done though so I am thinking about writing a very short list of things I want to do (not need to do or should do) and get on with doing them at a snail’s pace. A few years ago I found that if I kept in mind that it is just one day, with one meal, that took the madness away.

Tomorrow I’ll post about some of the things I’ve been doing, if I get a minute.

How to sew an easy fleece poncho

I know, I know, it’s summertime not wintertime but the evenings are cooler aren’t they?

Before we went camping I had in mind that ponchos would be useful instead of coats and I kept meaning to sew some then kept getting distracted. I ended up sewing two ponchos on the morning that we set off and it didn’t take long once I’d sussed the measurements. I used bits of a long piece of 25″ wide remnant I have from cutting Winter Sling Things which I wanted to use up without having much waste so I thought I’d try a two-rectangle poncho like the ones that knitters make.

Miss Amoo’s poncho was sewn from two rectangles measuring 30″ x 20″ and 30″ x 25″. I tried same size rectangles but the neck hole was huge. Making one narrower than the other solves this problem for some reason I have yet to quantify mathematically!

Cut the fleece rectangles and lie them out on the floor like this to make an L, with the wider piece being the at the top.

Stitch them together where shown on the picture to make a solid L.

Then take the top of the L and fold it over on itself right down to the bottom

Next take the right edge of the L and fold it over on itself to meet the edge of the bit you just folded down. You should have something that looks like a square with a corner cut out of it.

Turn it right side out and see if the hole fits over your small person’s head. If it doesn’t, you can cut the edges of the neck hole so that they are a bit curved, not straight and that will enlarge the hole a bit.

Here is a sleepy dolly modelling her new poncho

Cut slits in the front to enable the handling of mugs of hot chocolate or the eating of sweets, as required. Dolly will not be doing anything but sleeping so she can do without slits.

If you try this for a different size, let me know what dimensions you cut and I’ll add them here for future reference.

Contented

This weekend I

Sold three Winter Sling Things
Sewed two Winter Sling Things, one fuchsia, one blue
Waited in vain for a buyer to tell me which colour they would like.

Renewed my lack of faith in Sat Nav, twice
Finally bought three peg thingies for drying socks and smalls
Replaced the chair that has long been referred to as ‘The Death Chair’
Broke a bit of the computer desk to fit the scanner into it and freed up space elsewhere

Sparkled two dozen sparklers with five children
Watched rockets and catherine wheels
Was offered, and then drank, a bit too much red wine
Chatted with friends while the children all played happily
Watched El Famosisimo play guitar with our talented friend
Ate the most lovely pudding called hannas appelkaka

Today has not been nearly so nice nor as exciting but not bad either and now another day has appeared… where do the days go?

Happy sewing

I spent all last winter planning and thinking, drafting and re-drafting (in my head, not on paper) then more thinking and scheming and sourcing and costing and not sewing. Then I finally drew, cut, sewed and poppered and a Winter Sling Thing appeared. Except that as you may recall, it wasn’t called anything in particular back then.

By the time the Thing had finally come into being, it was almost spring and my fantastic, new, amazing, Winter Sling wearer’s solution was not really needed by anyone and I sold only one. Damp Squib.

The fleece was consigned to the shed in large plastic storage boxes and I didn’t think about it for months. Then the end of the summer happened and I felt a nip in the air so I re-listed the Thing on Folksy and Ebay and wouldn’t you know it! I have sold 4 in 10 days!

Doesn’t it look lovely in chocolate brown?

The Thing really looks great and the buyers have left me lovely feedback so I hope they will enjoy using it over the coming months. This has made me think that this could be a way to earn some biggish chunks of money. I have started thinking about how many Things I need to sell to pay off X and Y and Z or pay for A, B and C.

We do this all the time with the business; how many lets is a quarterly business phone bill? How many start up fees to get the car all logoed and wrapped in blue? How many monthly management fees to pay for more advertising? That is a bit exciting but not as exciting as making money for things that are a bit more fun for everyone in the long run.

Now I’m off to order some more poppers and shock cord elastic.