The Sewing Mom

We did it! We’ve reserved our booth in Knoxville, Tennessee for our first craft sale! We’re all very excited and now we have to make sure we have everything we need for our sale.

My sisters and I are busy sewing, making purses, totes and bags to sell. My niece has been crafting painted fabric wall hangings and my mom is making a variety of items. We should have a full booth and will hopefully sell it all!

In addition to what we are selling, we also have to promote ourselves. The goal is to not only sell at the craft sale, but to have sales continue through words of mouth. I sell things on this site and my sister and I have been working on both opening up online stores. To let people know where to find us, I recently ordered business cards from VistaPrint.com that I will insert into every bag I sell. I also have labels sewn directly into everything I create. I always want to ensure that the buyer remembers that they got their bag from The Sewing Mom!

In addition to the business cards, there are other promotional items that I’m considering including magnets and ink pens that can be personalized. I just want people to like what they buy from me and to help them remember me when they want to purchase again.

What type of promotional items do you use for your business?

Tags: printing needs, promotional items

A few years ago I purchased a relatively cheap inexpensive iron. Keep in mind, I don’t really iron very much, so I wasn’t too choosy about what I bought. The problem has become evident of late that my iron apparently doesn’t get very hot, at least not as hot as better quality irons go.

This heat issue became a problem when I was attempting to do iron on transfers a few weeks ago. I couldn’t get them to work. It was suggested to me that my iron wasn’t hot enough and I have to agree. So, I’ve been searching for a better iron, one that gets hotter. I wasn’t really sure what all I should be looking for until I found this video.

What kind of iron do you own?

Tags: fabric iron

The last couple of weeks I have felt exhausted. I sit at the computer or at my sewing machine and sometimes I feel that it’s all I can do to keep my eyes open. I’m not really sure what’s causing me to feel so tired all of the time, but I’d sure like to get to the bottom of it.

It seems that a few weeks ago I began stressing out about some things here at home, including the fact that I had to go see the dentist. Although it was just a regular check up, I have a bad fear of dentists and it seems that my sleep problems intensified during that time. The check up went well and I was relieved it was over, but my sleep problems continued. Of course, working on income taxes and gearing up to get my sewing business off the ground have added to the stress. Those events also have positive outcomes, but I can’t help but worry about them.

Last week, I stayed up late every night because my mom was visiting. I still got up at my regular time to get my daughter off to school, so I added more sleepless nights to what I’d all ready suffered through. For some reason, even though my mom is no longer visiting, I’ve continued staying up late this week. Add to that the middle of the night thunder and hail storms we’ve been having and it’s just a recipe for no sleep.

While exhaustion itself isn’t a medical issue, there are many medical conditions that do require B12 such as diabetes and gastric bypass. I’ve guess I’ve managed to explain pretty much why I’m feeling so exhausted. Thankfully for me, it’s nothing more serious than the need to relax and stop staying up so late. At least I don’t need a shot of B12, but if you are in the same boat and do need it, you may want to get your sublingual B12 here.

Tags: sublingual B12

I purchased my new serger machine last Friday and had no clue how to use it! It came pre-threaded and I checked everything according to the manual and turned it on. I placed a piece of fabric under the presser foot and pushed down on the foot pedal and it fed the fabric through, but no stitching took place.

Thank goodness I was signed up to take my owner class today! Turns out one of the 4 threads wasn’t in one hole correctly and that was it. Once that was fixed everything worked great!

So, today I learned how to thread the machine, it sews with either 3 or 4 spools of thread. I learned to make stitch and tension adjustments and I learned that by doing those adjustments, I can create different looks with the stitching. Now, hopefully, I’ll be able to remember what I learned and put it to use on some of my current projects, including my fleece baby blankets.

Tags: serger, serger sewing