Etsy Treasury, Hippie Days are Here Again

I created a new Etsy Treasury today, I've really been slacking off on my Etsy Shop & Blog since starting my part time job in January. But this morning I was inspired to through a treasury together, Hope you like it.

Featured on Saved By Love

A big Thank You goes out to Saved By Love Creations for featuring my Shag Pillow in their post on 50 Recycled T-shirt projects. It's really wonderful to be included with so many other incredible recycled projects. My favorite among them is the Pink Rosette Purse from Come Together Kids, but all of the projects are wonderful.This post has really upped my traffic, it's so wonderful that everyone is enjoying the pillow. Needless to say, they've been added to my blog roll, give them a visit.

Handmade Pillow Covers

Handmade Pillow Cover, a photo by b-a-boop on Flickr.

I finally finished the pillows I made those covered buttons for. The fabric is from the piles of designer samples my girlfriend gave me which I'm always using for my craft. This was one of the few fabrics that I had large samples of, 4 matching pieces about 20" x 24". After looking at them many times and debating what to make with them, I finally realized they would go well in my own living room. And luckily I had some coordinating brown cotton to make the edges with. I'm so pleased with how they turned out.

Shag Pillow

Shag Pillow, a photo by b-a-boop on Flickr.

Another handmade and upcycled present I recently made. I was inspired by a photo in a book of a denim rug I saw that was similar.

I began with two 14" squares for the front & back of the pillow, cut from a purple tee shirt.

I then cut 12" wide strips from some fleece remnants left over from a top made decades ago. I cut as many as possible from the odd shaped leftovers I had.

I roughly accordion folded the longest strip forming approximately 1" loops to estimate how wide it would end up and didn't think I had enough to cover the whole front. I then cut additional 12" strips from the purple tee shirt.

I started by centering the longest pink strip on one 14" square, leaving 1" of the purple hanging out on each side for the pillow seams. I then sewed a straight seam down the middle.

I folded over a 1" loop and sewed another seam about 1/4" from the first one. I repeated this until I didn't have enough fabric left for another loop.
Since it was knit fabric and going to be stuffed as a pillow, I just eyeballed the loops & seams, some were a bit crooked. If you wanted more precision you could measure & mark each fold & seam.

I then repeated looping the pink on the other half. I trimmed off the remainder of pink strip 1/4" away from the last seam.

I then overlapped a purple strip on top of the pink 1/2" and sewed over the same seam 1/4" from it's edge. Then I continued looping the purple in the same manner. After a few inches of purple loops, I trimmed it off and started another row of pink. As I was working with remnants, some small strips only made a few loops, so I patched pieces together as I had where the pink & purple meet.

I stopped the last loop about 1" from the edge and sewed the strip down to the square with a second seam to keep it from sticking out when sewing the pillow closed.
I thought it would be easier to leave it just with the loops before making it shaggy when sewing the pillow closed. I then placed the other 14" square face down on the loops and sewed the 1" seam around 3 sides of the pillow, sewing as close too the edges of the loops as possible.

I turned it right side out, stuffed in my pillow form & hand sewed the last edge closed.

Then it was time to make the shagging. I just took my scissors and cut the loops approximately every 1/2" (again just eyeballing it) and being careful not to cut completely down to the seams or to slice the base fabric.

And wallah! a cute shaggy pillow out of recycled materials.

Etsy Listing Titles, Etsy’s new search settings, spelling & SEO

If you don’t subscribe to Etsy newsletters and are not aware, this week they changed the default setting for searches to finding ‘relevant products’ first. This means that items with your search terms will appear at the top, not necessarily in the order of most recently listed. I have also been trying to revise my listing titles and tags to optimize for searches. Yesterday, I was revising a set of pillows I have relisted numerous times. The pillows are fuschia in color. I changed the listing title and then did a search on “throw pillows fuschia”. To my surprise it didn’t find my pillows at all. After numerous tries at revising and searching on a few different terms, I discovered that my title had the spelling for fuschia as “fuchsia” because that is the correction that Microsoft word gave me & is the actual spelling of the color & flower (named after a man named Fuchs). On my search, I had spelled it the way I assumed it was spelled, which also seems to be the way the rest of the world prefers to spell it “fuschia”. After revising my listing for the pillows with the incorrect spelling, I finally found them on the search along with everyone else’s fushia pillows. I hope this helps them get more views now.

I guess the moral of the story is - it’s a good idea to find out alternate spellings on your titles. I wonder, if Etsy had a spell check in the search would everyone else’s pillows get lost.

Pineapple Pillow

 Funny how when it comes to sewing for myself a lot of my projects end up unfinished. I too often get sidetracked by projects for the shops or presents I need to be make. Years ago I made a bunch of pillows for Christmas presents and started two for myself. Well after years of sitting in my unfinished pile, I finally finished off my pineapple pillow. All it needed was the velco sewn in for closing it. Its pillow mate has been hanging out in the livingroom alone all this time since it got finished right away. I’m glad they are finally together.

Upcoming Event

On Saturday Dec. 4, 2010 the ReFORMatory will be setting up shop at the Pink Ghost Mini Market, 1888 Polk Street, Hollywood, Fl - Noon to 5 PM. Come shop for pillows, handbags, jewelry, accessories and other handmade recycled / upcycled crafts.

Giving Myself a Pat on the Back

I know I shouldn’t be bragging, but it’s so exciting to make Etsy’s Front Page. A set of my pillows were featured last night. Of course I didn’t know till this morning when I found a number of people had faved my shop and then looked at Craftcult.com (great website if you haven't seen it). A very big THANK YOU goes out to alyanna, isn’t her treasury just lovely, I love the color and layout, and especially like each of the items on either side of my pillows. What a lovely assemblage of artists to be grouped with.

p.s. My husband had been using the computer last night to upload some lovely pictures from our trip to the AH-TAH-THI-KI Museum of the Seminole Tribe of Florida. You can find a link to his great photos on my sidebar, look for “BaubCat”.

Pillows and Patchwork

I like making pillows. I have many small remnants and pieces of designer decorator fabric samples. Most are not large enough for one pillow on their own, therefore I have fun trying to find new ways of combining coordinating fabrics into one pillow. I also enjoy using up my yarn and fringe collections to make trims. Here are some examples.