Hello Ayla May

Hello Ayla May!!  (there must be a song in that somewhere!!!)

bunting for ayla

One of my friends from work, Jamie and her boyfriend Andy have just had a little girl.

Ayla May Kelly was born on the 18.05.12 at 8.15am weighing about 7lbs.

flower detail

All of us at work have been waiting what seems like ages and dying for her to arrive. Jamie and Andy knew she was going to be a girl but I think her arrival date got a bit of a mix up and Jamie had to hang on a bit longer than expected.

A for Ayla and Apple of their eye

I think the birth was quite tricky but Jamie came into the office the other day with Andy and Ayla and she doesn’t even look like she has just had a baby. She looks amazing and obviously enjoying being a mum!!

Y is for Yummy little thing

Ayla is very cute and it was lovely to finally meet her.

ayla may kelly

tinyinc on the internet

tinyinc logo by Capriccio Design

I am finding that ‘maintaining’ tinyinc is as time consuming as ‘making’ for tinyinc.  Obviously the making is a joy. The maintaining in interesting but very challenging.

My sister is a freelance web site and graphic designer and runs  Capriccio Design and she designed a logo and business cards for me some time ago and even though the basics have remained unchanged it has come a long way from the original brand ideas.

tinyinc applique aprons

The design is now on my business cards, it is the gravatar on all my profiles and has even translated into the aprons that I wear at fairs etc.

I have loved this little logo and I adore the 100% handmade part. I have gone off it and I have even toyed with other designs that I have tried out in their very basic form on packaging and Liz has been exploring other logos for me but I do like the freshness of this logo.

I considered launching my own web site based shop rather than through selling sites and Liz has looked into all of this for me but it hasn’t progressed very far so I finally decided to forget all that the web site page simply needed to be updated.  Once I had decided that I was going to continue to use the original Capriccio logo,  it just needed to be on the web site.

It is now up there on my web page which appears first in any searches for ‘tinyinc’. I’m delighted with how the original logo has translated beautifully onto a web page. It is clean and crisp and Liz has brought it right up to date whilst managing to keep it simple, uncomplicated and straight forward to use. You can read a little about tinyinc on there and you can navigate to my blog, shops, contact details social media or pages.

I figure that the more places you can be seen and contacted from, the more likely people are to become aware of you.

With that sole purpose in mind, and in addition to my lovely new web site, I have:-

tinyinc on flickr

tinyinc group on facebook

tinyinc has a profile on facebook

tinyinc tweets

tinyinc is on the tryhandmade.com gallery

tinyinc has a studio on burda

tinyinc joined ukhandmade

It’s endless and some of the other pages that I have as a member or so are blank to date.  No time to fill them in!!!! I’m sure there are ways of rationalising which ones you promote but as a part time blogger and part time internet seller, it’s hard to get it right………

a tisket a tasket a traditional shopping basket

my shopping basket

I have a lovely traditional shopping basket that I like to use when I go to the butcher in the village.

It wasn’t always mine but it is in good condition. It has an original elasticated fabric cover that I absolutely hate so I decided to make a new one.

original basket cover

The original one has lots of raggedy edges and some questionable sewing skills so I suspect it was quite mass produced for very little cost.  The colours and the pattern are just not me at all.

my shopping basket alongside some of my other baskets

So I hunted through my growing piles of vintage fabrics to find the right colour and pattern for the job. I found pair of sweet pale grey blue curtains when I went searching that were just perfect to give this lovely little basket a nice coat.

And here it is. I’m very pleased with it and I think the pattern and colour are perfect for such a lovely thing.

new cover on my favourite shopping basket

It would appear that I have a weakness for baskets and have a couple more that I think could also benefit from a cover each.  We’ll see.

thrifty threads

box of sewing threads

Since Easter, the car boot sales have started again and I was at the local one last sunday.

The turn out wasn’t great but I expect that is largely due to the shocking weather we have been having. The ground was pretty waterlogged when it is usually pretty good under foot so there were neither a great number of sellers or buyers.

sorted into colours

I’m always on the hunt for fabrics, threads, ribbons and any vintage sewing bits. Finding and using fabrics and threads I have found are in keeping with my up cycle, repurpose policy but I don’t always get something. I have made errors with my purchases and have some fabrics that I can’t see me ever using but I have also walked away from stuff before and later regretted it.

This time, I really think I scored. I was just about to leave and realised I had missed an odd stall that was way out on a limb and away from the others so I wandered over just in case.

silko bobbins

A lady & her daughter were selling some really interesting things from a big white van but nothing that I needed/wanted/liked until I looked at the bits she had laid out on a ‘sale’ tarpaulin on the floor.  For 20p a bobbin, there were loads of sewing threads and for a further 20p a skein, there were embroidery silks.

I asked what she would take for all the threads and couldn’t walk away when she only wanted £8.  I also asked about the embroidery skeins and they were only an additional £3.

embroidery silks

For £11 I came home with about 120 skeins of embroidery silks and about 140 bobbins of thread.  There are 98 bobbins of Coats Drima most of which are brand new and still have the cellophane around them, 2 guttermann, 43 silkos and 1 other. The embroidery silks are in various colours and some have been started but lots haven’t.

When you consider that embroidery silks retail at about 75p each and sewing threads at about £2-£4 each, I could have between £350 and £500 worth of threads for my £11.

that’s a lot of thread

The lady was happy to get her cash and be rid of the quality street box of threads and I am absolutely delighted with my colourful stash!

baby beth bunting

I have a couple of very loyal customers who come back to buy from me time and again and I had another commission from one of them recently.

floral end flags

Everyone Catherine knows are having babies at the moment and having seen Arthur’s gifts, she has since bought bunting for various tiny arrivals amongst her family and friends. She even has some for her own tiny person.

baby beth bunting

The gift wrapped package was dispatched last week and I even managed to find a bubble wrap envelope to match the tag and ribbon. I was particularly pleased with that.

gift wrapped and ready to go

So little Beth in Dublin will hopefully have her bunting hanging in her nursery now.

tinyinc hand printed labels

kate’s kitchen and st george

kate’s kitchen apron

The girls in my close group all live close to each other and we fondly refer to ourselves as ‘the coven’ and our get togethers are referred to as ‘stitch and bitch’ and although we don’t get together anywhere near as often as we’d all like, when we do, it is always lovely and I miss them in between times.

None of us go mad on presents for each other but we do make a small gesture and it is usually done with a lot of thought.  I have had some wonderful gifts from my dear friends and love finding something for them when the time comes.

Kate’s home has a tinyinc tea cosy and her girls have bunting and millie had a tooth fairy cushion until recently when Jess also started losing her gnashers but Kate doesn’t have anything herself.

Kate, likes to rustle up a themed birthday cake or two when events dictate. We’ve seen Barbie in a ball gown, boobs in a bodice (only just held in!) and a variety of other sponge and icing delights.

It was Kate’s own birthday on Monday (St George’s Day) and since I certainly wouldn’t have impressed with my baking skills had I chosen to make a cake as a birthday gift for her, I did spend a bit of time putting together an apron for her cake making instead.

letter details

Kate is getting a new kitchen fitted over the summer so will be baking on new worktops, in a new oven and now she will also be baking in a new apron.

letter details

tatting

image of tatting work from orange bloom bloodspot - http://kerryh01.wordpress.com/2008/06/12/tatting/

I was recently given a vast collection of sewing materials and equipment that belonged to the neighbour of my mum’s friend. I was given them because she no longer sews in her old age, knew that I did from conversations with my mum and wanted her things to go to good use.

It was a very kind gift and the boxes were filled with some good sewing staples along with some incredibly interesting pieces. My stash of buttons is now burgeoning, I have a number of spare sewing and knitting needles, zips, and press studs now and a vast array of Silko threads which I love and all will come in very handy. Some of the more interesting things are these tatting shuttles. I’ve probably tried most crafts since I first became interested in making things as a kid but I have never tried Tatting before. I think I have seen it but was mistaken and thought it was crochetting.

Tatting, I now know, is a very durable form of lace created from knots and loops and can be done with needles or shuttles. The shuttles are small and look like weaving bobbins. The knotting and loops are worked by hand and must be incredibly fiddly. It would have been used for edging table cloths, antimacassars, table runners, collar decoration, doilies, handkerchief trimmings and a number of other decorations.

There are a number of theories on how the craft came about be it sailors forming decorative pieces for their loved ones while they were far away from home or simply a means of ladies keeping busy.  I like the idea of it originating as decorative rope work by sailors as a way of staying busy at sea and as love tokens for their family on their return.

a tatting doily from the shelby county historical society blog spot - http://shelbycountyhistoricalsociety.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/tatting-classes-to-be-held.html

Tatting is obviously still alive and well as Asfina has a shop on Etsy where these amazing tatting christmas baubles came from, there is even a dedicated UK Website for Tatting supplies and there are sites that provide Tatting examples and instructions.

Although it seems to be thriving in the UK, it appears to be more popular in the USA and there are you tube instruction videos to help you on your way, an american lady is blogging about tatting so it is much more current than I was expecting.  There is no doubt that it is very pretty and must be incredibly therapeutic to do. Some of the shuttles that are available are actually rather lovely too.

Asfina's Christmas Baubles

I’m so tempted to keep the threads and bobbins and give it a go but I already have so many things that I want to do with sewing and appliqué not to mention knitting and crocheting that I am reluctantly going to give them up and hope that I can find a home for them where they will be used with love to create more of these amazing decorations.

nice cup or rosy lea

new striped tea cosy

new flower top detail

I haven’t posted any tea cosies on here for a while and I finally got around to sewing tags onto my fresh stash and taking some photos of them.

purple stripes

purple top flower detail

These are a result of an idea my mum had, she has developed the pattern and they are all her hard work.

They differ from the previous ones that had a pom pom or a tied top. These have a new looped flower top detail mostly and the pattern is different to most of the previous ones.

teal and turquoise

oranges and lemons

magenta & navy

jubilee teacosy

I love them and my mum is very pleased with the outcome as she should be!

They will be a welcome addition to my online selling as I haven’t listed anything on there for ages either. Most of my recent sales have resulted directly from my blog posts or as a result of commissions.

I will slowly list them on one of the internet (folksy, etsy, coriandr & wowthankyou).

make do and mend

make do and mend picture

I love the idea of recycling, finding a new use for something when it has finished it’s useful first life.  We live in a frighteningly disposable world which unfortunately extends to living things as well as inanimate objects.

In order to rewire the population’s psyche we need to keep getting the message out there:- reduce, reuse, recycle – make do and mend – go green – save water, bath with a friend – nurture nature – fresh is best – green is the new black – don’t be a drag reuse your bag – don’t be a tosser, and the list goes on.

appliqued letters

keep calm and carry on is a throw back to the war efforts, Jamie Oliver has helped us with the ministry of food and there is a great push on growing your own vegetables these days.

Whether the state of your finances determines this or whatever the prompt, it really doesn’t matter but we need to stop conspicuously consuming and really get back to reducing, reusing and recycling.

go on make something or mend something, it’s very rewarding.

totes emosh

tote bag and my lovely vintage sewing machine

I don’t know about you makers out there but one of the reasons I got into making was to get those items that eluded me on the high street, be it clothes, house items, accessories or gifts.

getting the colours sorted

When I first moved to London at 17 and was desperate to follow the trends, I was only earning £25 per week. That left little for luxuries, let alone the latest ‘must have’ fashion item so I made most of my own clothes.  I was always getting kicked out of Miss Selfridges fitting rooms for sitting on the floor drawing what I had just tried on so I could rush home and recreate it myself.

attaching the handles

Invariably there were tweaks to suit my tastes, my shape or my skills but I was rarely without a pretty up to the minute wardrobe.  If it wasn’t clothes I was making, I would be knitting or sewing christmas gifts for my family and friends.  My grandparents LOVED my efforts more than anyone.  I suppose they saw them as personal and thoughtful gifts. They were certainly personal and selfishly, I thoroughly enjoyed making them.

fastening the handle below the top edge makes finishing off easier

I haven’t had any free time to make lately but one thing that has been on my mind to create is the ultimate handy tote bag. It seems ever elusive so I decided, after a quick stint in the garden this morning, to make a pattern and then make the tote bag this afternoon.

I have a mighty collection of bags at home, some are brilliant and really hit the mark but some are just not quite right.  Not one single tote I have gets it right for me.

junction detail and securing handles

I am very pleased with my efforts and the pattern is perfect for A4 folders and document whether you put them in as portrait or landscape.  It has depth so will take quite a lot as well as shopping and anything else that you would care to put in it.

lined and with and inside pocket

There are lots of totes out there but the lack of pockets, detail and colour were my issued.  I wanted something that had the detail, features and colour without being expensive!

All the materials are remnants, repurposed or vintage bits that I have come by (right down to the threads used) so it couldn’t have been less expensive to make and I love it.

the finished product

What’s more it is so easy to make!!