Vintage...sorry but I just don't get it

I own a Vintage Singer sewing machine, I know it is vintage because it's from the war time comes in it's original box with instructions and I can look up it's serial number to find when it was produced. You can see a picture of it above, it's so cute! (even if it does need the belt replacing). I'm going to take it with me for our craft fair at the weekend, as a prop to give the feel of a sewing room for our stall. If I can pull it off that is.

When my mother came to visit we went to have a look around Cardiff town centre at all the arcades and the architecture within. My mother really likes the "vintage" vibe, so we popped in several shops claiming to be vintage. To be honest, the majority of them I felt like I should have taken her to Oxfam or some other charity shop. With the exception of a few I felt like the shops had just completely missed the point of what vintage is all about.

When I think of vintage the first thing that springs to mind is wartime and rations. I class vintage as anything that's about 50 years old or more. Maybe I am wrong, but I like to think of these items being incredibly well made and bespoke items. Such things as handmade flapper dresses, crocheted cotton lace dresses with hand sewn linings, and beautiful brooches. However, what you seem to get in the shops these days are cheap imitations and trying to find the gold within these "junk" stores is more frustrating than trying to find a good fit of a t-shirt (that's another story).

What annoys me the most is when something is sold as "vintage" when in fact it is "vintage style". I once bought a scarf for my sister that claimed to be vintage, when it arrived it was packaged appallingly and I complained to the seller. Real vintage items should be treated with care and love, they're like little old ladies trying to cross a road they have lasted this long and we should endeavour to ensure they last a little while longer.

Although, the real bee in my bonnet is items that are classed as vintage, yet they were only in fashion 5-10 years ago. That's not vintage people, that's just tat. Oh well, sorry for the moan everyone I just really don't get what all the fuss is about.

Jar of goodies giveaway

Well we promised our Facebook followers that when we got to 500 likes we would host a giveaway, we're now at 600 likes and really should do this now.

So here's how it will work. We've just gone through our stock and picked out some lovely jubblies and popped them into a jar. We've created a rafflecopter for you to enter. There are little tasks with points, the more points the more entries you get. The winner will be announced on the 17th June.

The jar consists of the following:

1m pale blue 20mm cotton webbing

50g baby pink mix buttons

50g nursery mix buttons

30cm olive green leaf trim

1m pink 20mm cotton webbing

5m 9mm baby blue satin

10 15mm mother of pearl

1m 20mm cotton music notes

1.5m 16mm leopard print

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Monday Make....Pin Cushions

I absolutely love quilting, I have about 3 quilts that are "in progress" and one of them has been "in progress" for almost a year now. However, that is a queen size and I think I took on too big a project with that one, seeing as it was my first. Oh well, I will finish it at some point.

Anyway, I am forever trying to stuff pins in things, normally in my sleeve or scattered on the floor/desk/cats/etc. So I thought it was about time I made a really simple pin cushion. Given this one isn't finished as it requires a button in the middle and the side to be hand sewn, but you get the idea.

For all of those wanting to make on yourself here's how:

Materials:
2 contrasting cotton materials
1 piece of lace or curtain netting
rotary cutter or scissors
pins
sewing machine (obviously)
button
stuffing
ruler

 

1. Cut 4 squares each 2.5 inches width and height from both fabrics (8 squares in total)
2. Sew one square of one fabric to one square of another fabric along one side using a 1/4 inch seam. Do this until you have 4 rectangle pieces
3. Sew one rectangle piece to another rectangle piece, making sure the squares are contrasting when pieced together. You'll end up with a square.
4. Place the two squares right side together and sew all the way around the outside leaving a 2 inch gap (mine is always about 1 inch whoops) for turning and then stuffing.
5. Turn the squares the right side round and stuff with stuffing.
6. Sew up the open section with ladder stitch
7. Take your button and sew it onto the middle, you'll need to get your needle all the way through the stuffed square here to give it a nice puckered effect.
8. Poke pins in the top and voila you have a finished pin cushion.

Sewing satin ribbon

This weekend I've been busy getting bits and pieces ready for the craft fair my sister and I are doing on the 12th. The majority of the items I make are small, and I really wanted some pieces that were going to attract the eye and cause some interest. So I drove over to our local fabric shop and bought some lovely spotty fabrics to go with the linen look cottons I had already purchased.

I had my own reel of white satin ribbon I'd bought long before I started to stock ribbon, and I cut 25cm pieces. I then drew a heart on some card and drew directly onto the fabric with a fabric pen. I did quickly learn the easiest way to sew a heart is to cut the fabric loosely, mostly in a square, then sew along the outline of the heart.

One thing I didn't think about though was that the satin ribbon would fray and when pulled would tear, whoops! I learned this the hard way and now have extra lavender hearts, oh well.

So...how do you stop a satin ribbon tie from fraying whilst still looking pretty?
 Many sewing machines have different settings on them. A zigzag stitch, when the heart is stuffed, will show the stitching through the edges. So I chose an elastic overlock stitch instead. This gave me the zigzag I needed to stop the ribbon from fraying, but also gave the straight stitch edge to stop the stitching showing when the heart was stuffed.

You can see the results in the picture above, cute huh?

Craft Fair Enquiries

The business has been running for almost two months now, wow that went quickly! However, I still know very few handcraft businesses in the area. So I've decided to leave the house, shock, shock, horror, horror!

We're going to be taking part in a couple of craft fairs over the summer. So get your pens and diaries ready for where you can find us up close and personal. We'll be taking along with us a collection of our ribbons, fabrics, buttons & felts. As well as handcrafted homeware & purses as examples of lovely things you can do with our supplies.

We'll be giving our discount codes for our online shop on the day as well, so even more incentive if not just to come and touch 'n' feel the lovely items.

12th May 2013 - Wimborne Bake & Craft Fair
My sister Lindsey signed us up for this one as it's local to her and my parents. Our stall is going to have a lovely cottage feel to it, I've got a selection of new ribbons to take with me, and I'll have been sewing for the past fortnight to have lots of lovely bits and pieces on the stall including frame purses, some quilted linen cushions, and Lindsey is making some gorgeous crocheted items too.

26th May 2013 - Barry Leisure Centre Family Fun Day - 10am - 3pm
I've just signed us up for this lovely little vegan craft fair. It's likely only to be myself, not Lindsey going along so she'll be in charge of the online side of things that day. I've been told there's an Alice in Wonderland Theme, so I will have to get my thinking cap on as to how we can setup our stall within the theme. Hopefully it'll also involve some fancy dress too, what fun! If you're a reader of mine from Wales, please come along and say hello.

3rd - 4th August 2013 - Red Dragon Centre, Cardiff
Just across the way from where I live we'll be in the Red Dragon Centre for the weekend. There's ample parking and lots of places to eat. Even better it's around the corner from Cardiff Bay's beautiful harbour and the Doctor Who experience. So pop down to say hello if you're in the neighbourhood. We'll be there until 7pm and it's the perfect time to stock up on supplies whilst you start to think about what you'll be making for Christmas.

Feedly review

I promised I would come back to you with how I have been getting on with Feedly. Since the demise of Google Reader was announced I've been testing Feedly for reading RSS feed blogs. To be honest with your dear readers, I'm absolutely loving it.

I love that I can group the blogs I read into categories.
I love that I can read the latest ones first.
I love how everything is just there on a screen.

Do you feel the love?

The only thing I don't like, is to comment I have to click the blog and then scroll to the bottom of the post away from Feedly. If there was an option to do this all in one, then I would be super, super happy!

However, Feedly gets a 4.5/5 fantastic product.

Oh for the love of SEO, Google is King

I'm a lover of sharing information, particularly information that helps fellow crafters who are trying to survive in a world dominated by corporations. This post is no different, I want to tell you the latest thing I've discovered about SEO (search engine optimization).

So, you have your product, and your lovely photos and your lovely website, but sales are minimal if even any at all. So you start to look into ways to get yourself noticed. There are many different ways including paying for advertising. But, give that we're small businesses we can rarely afford to pay £100's for advertising. So, where to start?

I'm going to let you in on the research I've done this week. Google is one of, if not THE biggest search engine going. More organic searches come from Google than any other search engine, I know I for one use it for 100% of my searches it's even built into my browser.

There are a number of different things that you can do to increase your Page Rank (what Google uses to determine where you come in the search results).

1. Create a Google+ account - this is easy and if you have gmail you're already part-way there.
2. Create a Google+ page for your website - make sure you create as a local page, as Google will give you more weighting for local searches.
3. Link your website to Google+ - medium difficulty, you need to have admin details for webmaster tools (NB. if you use create.net then you can indeed access this)
4. Add the Google+ badge to your site so people can directly add you to their circles.
5. Build meaningful circles - invite your friends, people in the same industry, all those lovely crafters you've met. However, don't just add people for the sake of it. Social engineering is all about meaningful relationships, one person that interacts with your 10 times a week is better than 10 who interact with you once a month.
6. Connect your blogger to Google+ - this helps you engage more of your readers.
7. Interact - Google+ has communities that should be relevant with your industry, join in with the discussions and look for local communities also.
8. Get your website verified by Google - you can only do this once you've built a meaningful circle, but it's meant to vastly improve your search rating

This is just a drop in the ocean for how to improve your SEO, but if you start here then you're onto a winner already. Then you can look at things like Google Keyword Tool for writing descriptions and meta information. Oh and don't forget commenting on  blogs and the many other things we're supposed to do too.