This is an older blog and I've let it sit for some time now, even as I have moved far from having a handmade business, designing patterns, or writing for craft magazines. 

There are a number of free downloadable patterns and tutorial PDFs. If you can download them, you are free to do so, but more and more it seems Google isn't file sharing my old files as it used to.

If you can download, please enjoy. If you can't, please excuse that I may not see or respond to Google's notifications.

Happy stitching! 

Allison Dey

SweaterDoll

It's Harvest Time - and here's an apron for it!

 

It's time to bring in the harvest, collect the eggs, start the fall cleaning. At least up here in the northern hemisphere. 

Down south of the equator, it's time to get those seeds started and get some baby chicks.

Either way, this apron will do the job for you. It's got a huge pocket great for tools and seed packets or bringing in the harvest once it's gotten going.

It's the first pattern I've designed in a few years and it's already a best-seller in my Etsy shop. (UPDATE: THE ETSY SHOP IS CLOSED PERMANENTLY. IF YOU WISH TO ACQUIRE THIS PATTERN, PLEASE EMAIL ME.)

It takes just a little over a yard or metre to make or you can mix and match fabrics as you like.

I can't wait to make more. I found a lovely homespun fabric to make one from. I've even made one from a vintage table cloth. 

But my favorites might be those made by friends and customers. Michelle, an Etsy customer, made a whole batch. And this is a photo of Del, president of the Beerwah CWA in Australia, modeling one made there.

I'm so thrilled everyone loves this apron as much as I do! 

I'll Just Leave This Here

Several times I have mentioned that my stitching journey began with a pre-printed potholder my grandmother gave me to work when I was about 8 years old. I added a little "For Dad" to it and gave it to my father who duly hung it up in his home office.

Years later, after a couple of moves, I no longer saw the potholder on the wall. He and my stepmom had a couple of boys and, of course, all their photos joined ours and their handmade gifts rotated along those walls of the office.

A couple of years ago, when I moved across the world, from Australia, to live near my folks, I asked my dad about the potholder. He couldn't remember where it had gone.

Now, I remember many of the little handmade items my own two children gave me, but I honestly couldn't imagine trying to keep track of a 66 year spread of children's offerings to a parent. 
Then my 90 year old father died just after Father's Day this year. And while looking for some photos in his office, I found a box of mementos. Guess what was inside?

Reunited after 52 years. This potholder set me up to love threads, to love hand work and hand stitching. 

It doesn't take much to fall in love. Just some undivided attention, physical touch, and unconditional love - of warts and all.  

I don't blog much here anymore. My life has taken me out of the business of stitchery into the business of elder-life. My hands are always still working on something, but the magazines I worked for have gone out-of-print or only use in-house designers. And while the SweaterDoll Etsy shop is still active, the drive to manage a home designing business has much waned. 

Currently, I am working in a school with special ed kids as I did so many years ago. I read sci fi and until a couple of weeks ago was enjoying doing the New York Times Acrostic and jigsaw puzzles with my dad. Now I spend time with (step)mom and husband and try to manage my wild woodland yard which is supposed to be less woodland and more residential (it will never happen). 

I might blog again, but in the meantime, I'll just leave this here. THE potholder that started it all. 

Etsy: Oh the times, they are a changin'

I haven't blogged for some time, but I'm going to share my thoughts regarding today's Etsy podcast regarding the change in fee structure and introduction of tools sellers can pay for to improve their shops.

Today's podcast explained a lot of thinking behind the big issues of the Etsy day and I really appreciate Josh (CEO) and Kruti (General Manager of Seller Services) for taking the time to answer questions and explain Etsy's rationale for the upcoming changes.

(Read it here: Etsy Seller Handbook)

(Listen to it here: iTunes podcast)

I really had a hard time understanding the whole transaction-fee-on-shipping thing because I felt it would simply exacerbate the issue, leading sellers to react with the knee-jerk reaction to raise product or shipping prices to maintain their (small) revenues and profit margins as it is. Based on Josh's comment that he was surprised how many sellers did not even understand the current transaction fee structure, I would suggest that unless sellers listen to the part of the podcast regarding reviewing pricing structure overall, this reaction is likely to occur in many shops worsening the very problem Etsy is trying to solve.

I expected the podcast to be Etsy rhetoric, as I have found many Etsy podcasts or announcements to be, but this one did get onto a few of really helpful ways to look at our businesses and I am glad I gave it a really good listen.

But then it really fell apart for me (emotionally) and showed me how far we have moved away from the origins of Etsy and how much more profit-driven Etsy now is, especially as a publicly traded business entity.

In the podcast, Josh gave tremendous acquiescence to buyer habits that Etsy researched as the reason for many of the changes. WAIT! I'm not saying buyer isn't significant here. Our business should be all about wanting buyers, wanting to attract buyers, wanting to find our tribe of buyers, and wanting to provide them with great buying experiences. But what surprised me - and then didn't - was the whitewashing of the fact that Etsy is SUPPOSED to be a different kind of marketplace, one in which buyers DO understand they are shopping at a place wholly and entirely NOT Wayfair, Target, West Elm, Amazon, eBay.

The statements regarding the fact that buyers simply wouldn't want to come back if their shopping experiences on Etsy were not exactly like other online venues so we should design ourselves to be just like other marketplaces is a now vocalized shift in ethos of the Etsy marketplace. No longer are we providing an entirely unique place, in practice, a marketplace that by its nature is UNLIKE every other online venue because it's not actually a singular venue, but several million non-mass-production venues - each one its own handmade personal business with its own policies and qualities and stories. 

No, we are responding to buyers' desires for unique handmade goods but having to be exactly like everyone else selling mass-produced goods while we do it.

Etsy seems to have abandoned the movement to promote this alternative kind of marketplace, to provide the ground for it, promote it as that, and continue to stand behind educating buyers (who value products that are unique, personal, handmade by real people with real lives, real costs of small business) regarding shopping small and handmade. Buyers used to respect that Etsy was actually NOT like every other marketplace online and Etsy helped them learn why that was a good thing. Not anymore.

Josh is telling us that buyers, while they come to Etsy shops for handmade and unique items, want us to provide goods in exactly the same manner as other online venues. Okay, but why not just remain THE unique, single-handedly providing an alternative to all the other online venues and keep educating our unique customers??

Profit margins. Being a publicly traded corporation means you are no longer beholden to your customers in the same way that you are beholden to your investors. Profit drives Etsy now. And with almost all corporations, it's not even about profit, but MORE and ever increasing profit.

So it was a helpful podcast, but it was also the last nail in the coffin of old Etsy for me. Clearly, I will be making changes in line with the new tools and fee structure so my business can thrive. That's just good management of my own business. And some of the changes might well prove out to be very good changes, so thank you, Etsy.

But on the heart level, it's a bit like watching that last hippie die, leaving the earth with nothing but Gens X, Y, and Z. It's the end of an era. And the return of the rat race.

When things go wrong in the sewing room

On my Pinterest account, I have a small selection in a board called iCraft Therefore I Am. It includes some cute quotes and sayings and a few craft supply skirmishes. Like cats with yarn. Or the serger gone mad.

I see these blogs with the styled photos of beautifully made items and I have to applaud those who make mistakes and either post some of those outtakes now and then or actively include them in their tutorials or displays. 

Mistakes happen in the work. They are the ground for impolite language we try not use in public. These mistakes show making for what it is - a messy adventure into even well-known territory that plays out as it will. Success is a possibility but not a definite.

Mistakes happen. Threads are pulled and restitched. It's a process. It's a game with an opponent. It's a quest. 

Safe travels, fellow stitchers. There are dragons at the edges of those fabrics. There are beasts attached to the loose end of that thread. We can't tame them. We can only keep venturing forward, with scissors as sword and thimble as shield. 

Spring kits and an ice storm

Just when thoughts of spring inspire hand sewing kits and birdsong mini hoop brooches, an ice storm passes through bringing cozy chair reading and hot tea back into the week.

The incredible stash of wool I am playing with has already borne kits for chocolate bunnies and strawberry pincushions.

And then there's the boro mending to be done.

The kilt pin is a sample for a local workshop. Slow stitching is a quiet joy and a simple pleasure.

 

Instagram, local classes, ironing

Ping me, pop me, zap me, hashtag me, whatever the lingo, connect with me on Instagram. Yay! For the first time in my life, I have a mobile device. It was a gift. It's still not a cell phone, it's a tablet.

Excuse my ignorance!

Do I announce that I am @sweaterdollstories? Or is it #sweaterdollstories?

I have no idea. Just search "sweaterdollstories" on Instagram.

Instagram is so lovely but it's a bit of work for me. The tablet camera is not great so I have to get the digital camera, take a photo, upload it to the laptop, edit it, export it, email it to myself, go to the tablet and save the email photo, then I can post it to Instagram.

Seriously? 

Yes. Could living the simple life be any more complicated?

I just posted a photo of some of the wonderful ladies who completed their Embroidery School samplers in a class I led yesterday in Nevada, Missouri, about 20 minutes from Fort Scott, Kansas where I live. 

Thanks to Erica of Nine Patch Quilt Shop who stopped by my booth at a fair in December. Not only did she pass on to me tons of wool fabric she had been given, she booked some classes. This was the first. We've already booked the second Embroidery School group for February and are quickly filling up the calendar with other classes for crazy quilt embroidery, boro stitching brooches, visible mending, and sweaterdoll making.

And here's a little shout out to Ann Wood Handmade who included a photo of her trusty iron yesterday. My favorite iron is the one that I don't burn the bottom of. I haven't discovered that one yet. But so far, my favorite iron is this secondhand beauty I found at a thrift store last year. 

It's a Toastmaster iron, simple, no steam. It's small, easy on the hands, and I iron a lot of small bits. My mother left me her Sprinkle a'Plenty which I use with distilled water.

I just used it this morning to straighten out a bit of linen that had been stuffed between my project and something else. Hmmm.....how did that happen anyway?

Just finished embroidering and assembling this little cast-off velvety jewelry box gift. The "tea & gossip" pattern begs to be used again. I love the little enamelware teapot.

 

It's for sale in my Etsy shop. It's in a lovely green box, hand embroidered and stuffed with cotton batting and wool fleece. 

Off to play with that teapot pattern. And to get another cuppa on the way.