Mondays, Home Cooked Dinners and more...

Ah, Monday. The day after Sunday when it's hard to drag yourself out of bed and get back into the routine. Fortunately, it's a little lighter in the mornings now, so it doesn't seem like you're getting up to go to work in the middle of the night. That is a definite positive. It's still difficult, though. But I'll keep on until someday (ah, someday) when I can quit the dayjob and actually do something I like to do all day. Hope springs eternal!

Speaking of liking what you do all day, my partner-in-crime/sister-in-law Katie has started up a little business of her own, and I'm really excited for her. From her flyer:

"At the end of a busy day when you don't have time to cook for your family, wouldn't it be nice to have a prepared, home cooked meal, ready to pull out and put on the table? Consider these simple (kid tested and approved) meals from Katie's Kitchen. Let Katie do the work for you and make dinnertime at your house a little less stressful for a change."

She's offering two different sizes of meals; the Small serves up to 3 people, and the Large serves 4-6 people. I can personally attest to Katie's skills in the kitchen. When we first brought my daughter home from the hospital, we had 3 or 4 meals of hers in the freezer, and everything was very quick and easy to prepare, and most importantly, yummy! For more information, visit her website: http://www.katieskitchenonline.com/.

In other news, I've been working on my embroidery machine skills, and I think I might be getting the hang of it. I have so many ideas I want to put into action, and not enough time! I did recently buy some blank aprons, so be on the lookout for those soon! I've gotten lots of great designs and can't wait to use them. Want a sample? Of course you do!

I think this one is perfect for Father's Day..I bought black bib aprons to put this design on. Isn't it fun? Be on the lookout for this to be in the shop soon!

Short Update

This is going to be a short one. Just wanted to update the calendar to note that there is no Northside Farmer's Market this weekend, unfortunately. Apparently there weren't enough farmers available on that date, so the whole thing had to be cancelled! Farmers are busy this time of year, so it does make sense. But, we will be at the Sketchworks Art Mart in Decatur on Saturday May 3! This is a new one for us, but it sounds like a lot of fun. Come out and see us!

Sketchworks Art Mart
Saturday May 3, 11am - 5pm
3041 North Decatur Rd
Decatur, GA 30079
-North Decatur Rd between Dekalb Industrial and E. Ponce

More details will be listed as they come in!

Fabric Fridays!

I'm starting a new feature today, Fabric Fridays! I love fabric so much, I wish I could buy bolts of all my favorites. I also love poking around on Etsy and looking at all the great fabrics people have for sale. So today I was shopping around, and after buying some ribbon I probably don't need, I decided to look at fabrics. My, oh my. So many fun prints! These were a few of my favorites:

When I saw these two prints, I thought of my mom. She collects tea pots and loves to drink tea..

I know they don't coordinate, but now I'm thinking, well, I could just make her two bags for her to carry around her stuff, or maybe an apron that she would probably never wear.... hmmm. These two lovely fabrics are available at My Heart and Sew. They also have lots of other fun prints I'm having a hard time resisting.

Spring is upon us here in Atlanta, and there's tons and TONS of pollen laying around to prove it. I found this super-cute bright and cheery non-pollenating flower fabric at It's My Notion:

I just love it! Makes me think of a cute little girl dress, or maybe a tag blanket with comfy fleece or minky on the back. This is all going to get me in trouble, I can tell! Maybe this idea of featuring fabrics once a week isn't a good idea after all!

April!

Wow, it's April. I'm still trying to figure out where March went, but I guess when you're sick for a month, you lose track of time! Anyway, I realized I hadn't posted anything in a week, and thought I better catch up!

Katie and I are planning on doing the Northside Drive Farmer's Market on April 12th, which is only next Saturday. Yikes! Katie's been knitting like a fiend while I am running behind. I haven't put together a single tutu yet! I'm just hoping the market goes off without any problems, since as far as I know there hasn't been any advertising. This worries me! So we may or may not be out there next Saturday. I'm going to look into the Peachtree Road Farmers Market as well, and see what they have to offer.

I've slowly but surely been practicing embroidery. It's so much fun, I wish I had more time to do it! So far I've done my little key fobs, seen in a previous post. I was very excited when a few of them sold on Etsy! I'll have to whip up some more for upcoming markets. I've also done my first burp cloth:

I was really happy with the way it came out, I think it's super-cute. I want to do some basic non-personalized burps to have available at markets, so people don't have to wait for me to do a custom job. And it's always fun to be able to take something home right away! I also thought of just doing initials, any comments on that? I want to do up bibs that way as well. Let me know what you all think!

Aside from those little things, I've made up some more clippies:

I love the colors on these, I think they're lots of fun for Spring. They would be great to mix and match and make your own sets! They're available in the shop now. Get them while they're hot!

Stickers!

We're beginning to look almost like a real business here at Sugar Plum Delights. In preparation for Spring markets and festivals, I decided that we needed a bit more of a "presence" you might say. So, I whipped up those clippy cards that I posted about a little while ago, made some matching hang tags to add to tutus, bibs, and whatever else we have, all to look a little more uniform. Then I started thinking, well people are going to need to have bags to take away their many purchases from our booth, and what good is giving them a bag with no business identification on it? We want other people to see where our customers are getting their great products. So, I picked up a Xyron 510 at Michaels (using a 40% off coupon, of course), played around on PrintMaster, and....Voila!

It's our very own sticker! I slapped this on some nice white shopping bags and now we look professional. It would have been better if my circle cutter would have cooperated, but I'm still working on that.

The Xyron machine is really cool, I can't believe I waited so long to get one. If only I had known that I could put anything in there and make it into a sticker, I would have had one years ago. I'm still playing around with it to see what all I can do, but I hear you can actually put fabric in there. I 'm not sure what I would do with sticky fabric, but you better believe I'll find a way to use it!

I also whipped up some cute new clippies in the last few days. They're available in the shop now!

On a personal note, we're still recovering from the crud here at Sugar Plum Central, but I hope everyone out there is feeling well!

Keychains Galore!

This embroidery thing is pretty cool. I've been playing with my machine and learning more about it every chance I get. I still haven't figured out the whole stabilizer and what to use when, but that may take a while. I also have this software that seems complicated, but everyone says it's the best on the market. Whatever! I want point and click interaction here. But, I'm learning, and in the meantime I can at least monogram! Okay maybe not monogram in the guest towel monogram sort of way, but I'm getting there. Tonight, I produced these lovely objects:



Aren't they cute? I was pretty impressed with myself, I have to admit. My husband said I should have spelled out "ASK" in the picture, but I wanted the pink one in the middle. Anyway, I'll be listing them in the shop this evening. Customers will be able to choose the color of the webbing and the font. I better order more webbing, I'm running low. Yikes! The colors I currently have are fuschia (limited), pink, red, black, turquoise and brown. Font choices are Curlz, Girls Are Weird (the fuschia one), and Tina (red). I'm working on getting more. I LOVE fonts, almost as much as I love fabric, so you can bet I'll have a ton of choices!

She's Crafty...

Ta Da! Welcome to Shannon's First-Ever Tutorial! I was browsing around sewforum.com today and saw a very nicely done version of a placemat purse that I had never seen before. The person who posted her pictures didn't post how she did it, so we (me and a few others on the board) decided that we could just figure it out. And we did! I was at work all day, so I started playing around with a piece of paper, and ended up with a very nice office paper purse, complete with staples. I'll have to post that picture, just because it's funny. Anyway, I have a ton of placemats lying around just waiting to be made into bags, so I got home and after putting my neanderthal/toddler to bed, I started to play with a real placemat. And this is what happened:

Alternative Placemat Purse Tutorial
(better name is pending - I'm open to suggestion!)


1. Start with your standard placemat. This one is 13” x 19”.

2. Fold in half lengthwise.

3. Rotate

4. Fold bottom up until you have the desired size of your bag. Pin and sew all the way around (you don’t have to do the bottom unless you want a top-stitched look). Make sure you use a heavy duty needle or a walking foot, depending on the weight of your placemat. This one is heavily interfaced, so it was pretty thick at the corners.

5. After sewing, you’ll have two pockets on the inside. It’s magic! Feel free to attach any closure at this point; snaps, Velcro, ribbon, whatever. I didn’t attach a strap to this one as I didn’t have any cord on hand, but I would attach it here.

6. And, voila! The almost finished placemat wallet/purse. This is relatively small, so I envision it to be used as a wallet while traveling, shopping, clubbing, any time you don’t want a large clunky bag with you. Great for moms! I didn’t permanently attach the ribbon, since I’m not sure if I’ll stick with it or not. I may embroider it.

Variation: I didn’t add any depth to the bag, but here’s what you can do:
1. Flip bag inside out
2. Cut about a 1-inch notch out of each corner at the bottom of the bag (I hope you can visualize this..Word won't let me copy the cute little graphic I drew)
3. After cutting, smoosh corners together and sew across the smoosh on both corners. I’m sorry, but I don’t have a picture to illustrate this, and my drawing skills are limited. If you have any questions please ask!
4. Flip bag right side out, and now you have a little depth to your bag!

There you have it! If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask, and I'll do my best to help you. Special thanks to tzb123 on sewforum for my "A ha!" moment! I'll be sure to post pictures of the bag when I do get it completed with strap and embellishment. This should give you the basic idea, though! Go on! Be creative!