Behind the Scenes: Making Mini Campervan Mobiles

Do you ever try and set yourself targets to beat whilst doing something boring? I do... such as,

'Last time I had to draw around and cut out 24 small 1/3 of a triangle funny shapes it took me 35 minutes....' (for the Celtic Knotwork Penny Rug Pattern)

These funny little bits made up the trinity knots on my new Celtic Knotwork Pattern

'So next time I'm going to try and do it in 30 minutes'

Well, that's the kind of bet I have with myself when I'm doing something repetitive, so this morning, when I had to cut out and sew up 12 mini Campervan bodies, I wanted to see how long it would take me to sew up 5 (the number I use for the baby mobiles I make:

So I paused to quickly take an action shot (to make the post more interesting!)

And off I went.

13 miniutes, to sew up 5 mini campervan carcasses.

6 pauses in the 13 minutes:

1 to take a pic
1 to refill the bobbin
4 to umpire in rows between the children... despite there being 3 other adults in the house it seems it's still my job to stop whatever I'm doing and run in to prevent WW3 taking place in the playroom over who's turn it is with the remote control/barbie and her horse/the loom band gizmo/etc!!!

So, now that's my target to beat for next time!

And finally... a gratuitous shot of my messy desk, my gorgeous Benedict Cumberbatch calendar and the drama I had to pause on BBC iPlayer as otherwise I'd have done no sewing at all!!!

Felt Rainblow Cloud Baby Mobile Pattern

I am taking part in the Etsy School SEO Month at the moment. As part of that, we have to look at the stats that Etsy provide for us sellers and disseminate them into something meaningful, about what works, what doesn't, where we might be able to improve, etc.

One of the things that I noticed was that my two most popular items in the last couple of months are these two (click on the pictures for links to the listings in my Etsy Shop):

The multi cloud mobile is actually the more popular of the two, but in order to turn that one into a pattern I'd need to provide instructions for making the hanger, which at the moment is the weak link, in that I get a friend to make them for me!

So onto the 2nd most popular item, the wall hanging.

This was much more straight forward to turn into a pattern. So last week, I locked myself away for a couple of days and....... Voila!

Making a pattern is a funny thing. You know exactly how you make something you're familiar with, but designing a pattern is quite a different thing. You need to be sure that the order you're giving people is actually the most sensible, because whilst I might be able to sneak something to an item after I've supposedly finished an hide the evidence that I did it that way, it's not ideal to suggest other people do it!

You also need to take good clear photos and label them all... this takes a LOT longer than I'd like, but as they are essential to my patterns, they're a necessary evil!

You can find the pattern in my Etsy Shop and also on Craftsy, along with all my other patterns for sale.

Any of the finished items that I make are potentials for being turned into a pattern, so if there's anything you'd specifically like to see, please feel free to shout out suggestions!

Creating Felt Baby Mobiles

As regular readers of this blog will know, I have joined with a group of other UK based artists, designers and creators to try and highlight the quality of Handmade products in this country. The new website is called Uniquely UK

We have started a blog, to try and raise the profile of the site and I recently wrote a piece about the process of creating a bespoke item for a customer.

The item in question was 3 enormous cloud baby mobiles, definitely the largest things I'd ever tackled!

If you want to hear more about the steps I went through to get to this point of having a 3.5 foot wide cloud hanging in the only room in my house with a high enough ceiling to take a decent photo, have a read here

Tutorial: How to Ladder Stitch - The Secret to Hidden Sewing

I've been thinking about how good demonstrating ladder stitch would be for my first video tutorial and for anyone who's seen my Facebook posts this week will know that I've been manically producing large rainbow coloured raindrops for a collection of huge baby mobiles that are due to be sent off tomorrow to The States.

So I've created the following video to show how to sew up a stuffed object (such a soft toy, a cushion, part of a baby mobile like this) without your stitches showing. Ladder stitch is a wonderful took, that once learnt will make all your stuffed plush creations look so much more professional.

 

 Feel free to leave any comments below, especially if you have any questions. Hopefully as I get more practice at making video tutorials they'll get a bit more professional too!

 Thanks for watching :-)