I finally finished the Shark in the Park storysack!
I made the game quite a while ago (and posted about that), – but I had to sew hair on the Timothy Pope doll and make him some clothes, which was a fiddley job.
The other characters were scanned from the book and made into ‘lollystick puppets’.
Luckily I had some shark print fabric in my cupboard, which is just perfect for this Storysack!
Making No7 ochre aprons with red ties, today, because Etsy shop has sold out. Measuring from the curved edge for the pen pocket is time consuming…so I made a template to align with the edge and drop the little pocket into…very pleased with that!
Spent the morning re-photographing the ticking No3 apron. One of the earliest aprons in the shop, designed in 2013, the photographs were not the best – the Etsy/Folksy shops desperately needed fresh ones with better lighting and detail of the red stitching. £35. folksy.com/items/5503591-Womens-cotton-ticking-apron etsy.com/uk/listing/468027819/womens-cotton-ticking-apron
Started a new 2017 notebook, lovely brown paper, looks great with black and white ink! – 3 days of ‘hard thinking’ and writing about ‘Aprons for Makers’, design and craft – which I condensed to use in updated ‘About’ sections Etsy/Folksy, website, Linkedin. Drawing little pictures makes it easier to look back at what I’ve written and remember it….
A bespoke order for Much Ado Books in Sussex, finished and posted off. The apron is a variation on a classic shape, cut a bit wider for extra coverage because they deal with a lot of dusty boxes of old books, they also requested longer ties to tie up at the front. I showed them some diagrams of different colourways and they chose the ochre denim with burgundy colour ties for the men’s size and dark green ties for the smaller women’s size. I used ‘antique bronze’ metal D-rings (for the first time) from U-handbag which worked beautifully for these aprons.
I had a lovely custom job for Sarah Myatt Glass https://folksy.com/shops/SarahMyattGlass last week. A No7 ochre/red with big side pocket (front ones fill with glass bits!) and bigger chest pocket, completed with red stitching! It’s so interesting finding out about how other craftspeople use their materials, and to be able to design aprons that really work for them.
Linen/cotton aprons in fabulous colours in production…
Before Christmas, I made a custom woodwork apron for a client – it was a long design process, several months, and required 3 toiles (calico versions) and lots of advice from woodcrafter friends. I’ve tinkered with the pattern some more, and finally have the first finished woodwork apron for the Folksy shop. The cargo style pockets are quite a challenge, and the magnetic pocket tabs are tricky… they want to stick to everything including the sewing machine plate! Hopefully I’ll get James to model for photos tomorrow….
This week I’ve gone back to working on a woodwork apron. I made a custom woodworkers apron for a client before Christmas, the development was a lengthy business. The pattern’s been tweaked a bit and today I cut out the apron pieces…more photos over the next few days…..
December was a bit fast and furious, finishing an order of 20 bespoke aprons for Marine Ices in Chalk Farm (ice-cream parlour), whilst orders for aprons and Christmas decorations were flying out of the Folksy shop.
Discussions with Marine Ices started in August. It took ages to source them the right fabric – it was surprisingly tricky to find a nice blue cotton the right weight, price and with a reliable supply (for replacement aprons in the future).
The apron also needed to feature the Marine Ices logo, screen printing was going to be costly for such a small run and there was the chance that it wouldn’t look great either – after a bit of research I decided to have fabric digitally printed with the logo designs. There are several good companies out there, I used Bags of Love because they had the weight of fabric I needed for this particular job. 30 logos were printed for around £23. The fabric did shrink 4.3% in the wash, I was just about able to cut them out with enough for turnings, phew!
