hello my peeps! i made a new hat yesterday and will probably put it up today when tina comes over to take pictures. this is so fun! i am really enjoying having a partner in this business. i discovered google analytics (thank you fellow etsyers) and now i just want to see how we are doing all the time! must work though or we have no product to sell! today my friend joyce is bringing me some fabric to make her a bag/hat combo. i always love getting fabric! it is a sickness. give me your tired your poor, your huddled masses and give me your FABRIC!!!! :)

i know tina started a hat today. i hope it went well. i made the 6 fabric roses and i think they turned out well. check them out! i am also starting a new hat. it will be black and white on one side and sunflowers on a black background on the other. way cute! i think i will make the rosette green.....or maybe pink. gotta go work!

today was a frustrating day because i tried to figure out how to create a collage with our pictures but i needed the pictures to be really small so i could use them for our banner on etsy. (are you still with me or did you fall asleep....) anyway, i gave up. i am sure there is a way to do it, but it was beyond my brain power! so instead i am creating a new item for our shop. i am making rosette that you can use in a flower vase. interesting idea, no? they are very cute, i think but i need to go get some white pipe cleaners. you will have to keep checking to see what they turn out like.

so, today i had to make a trip to joann's. fabric withdrawal. what can i say. i have so much that i can match any color in the rainbow, but still..... sometimes you just know that the right fabric is going to make that bag or hat just that much better, you know? and since i was hoping we were going to get an order for 5 hats (which so far has not materialized, but i am still optimistic because i am a glass is half full girl), i figured i needed to go and get coordinating fabrics for the choices i already had. besides, you can never have too much fabric. so this afternoon i will be sewing my heart out.

I, like Karen, have a Janome machine. I do really like it. I bought it mainly because it makes great buttonholes! All other machines i have and in the past just don't make great buttonholes, and I like to make tops with cute buttons. Another one of my passions is to buy really cute buttons when they are on sale at Joann Fabrics. Yesterday they were having a 50% off sale on their buttons and the notion wall! It was like Christmas! Anyway, Janome makes a very smooth running machine and handles machine quilting pretty well.

My perfect day would be the house to myself with a good movie and my sewing machine and delicious fabric to work on! I, (Tina), have never taken a formal sewing class except for a quilting class i took with Karen. From there, we started making beautiful quilts to give to all our family and friends.. but when we ran out of giftee's, we had to figure out something else that would incorporate our overabundance of material! So the tote bag business was born. Karen is very artistic and is branching out creating her own patterns. I am still too unsure and need the crutch of a pattern. I have always looked at the main staples (McCalls, Butterick, Simplicity and Vogue). But i started looking at some independent pattern makers for tote and purse patterns. I just feel a bit safer knowing that someone of some authority has made the item before and tested it out! I may be a bit too old and settled in my ways to take an actual sewing class to learn the right way to do things. Maybe one day I will!

my sewing machine only came with a few bobbins. it is a janome and you can't just go to the local fabic store and get the correct bobbin (i know, i tried). so i went to a place that shipped them to me called sewingmachinesplus.com. it is so much better to have a bobbin for every thread color! it saves time and i can match the thread to the project rather than just get close.