A Look Back at 2012

Even though I wasn't very active on my blog, I was pretty active in my sewing room. Here is a sampling of what I worked on in 2012:

Did some appliques on shirts and other things.

 Did much more customer orders in 2012 than in 2011.  I'm finally getting my name out there a little bit. :)

 Embroidered different items including capes, shirts, and stockings.

 Improved my digitizing skills, including an actual customer logo that I digitized.

 Made quite a few key chains.  Gave some away and actually sold some too.

 Embroidered on quite a few towels - hooded and just plain towels.

Overall it was a good year.  I enjoyed most of the work I did and I love being able to do more things for customers.  I'm hoping 2013 allows me even more time in my sewing room and more opportunities to sell my work.

PJ Style

Several years ago I bought some really fancy embroidery software.  It does all sorts of things that I still haven't figured out.  I use it (at least in little ways) on almost every embroidery project I do.  But, one of the major capabilities of it is digitizing.  This is taking an image and making it into a file that my embroidery machine can use.  I have done some work with this aspect of the machine, but never much that I've been very happy with.  A couple of months ago, Super D told me about a friend of his that writes children's books.  He had a logo that he wanted digitized and sewn out onto some polo shirts.  I gulped and said send me the logo.  He sent it to me and it looked relatively simple, so I decided I would give it a try.  I digitized it, sewed out a sample, and showed it to the customer.  He was happy with it and asked me to embroider it onto 5 polos.  I just finished them last week.  He came and picked them up and brought me 10 more polos.

Here is the logo I was digitizing:

 And here is the logo sewn out on a polo shirt:

Feel free to check out PJStyle.com to see what my customer is up to.

Flashback Friday

I had a request to bring back Flashback Friday's now that I'm blogging semi-regularly again.  So, here are the first two hooded towels that I made.  This was before I had my own embroidery machine - I was using my mom's.  It's fun to do the designs on the different color towels, but much easier for orders and stuff to just keep things on white.

 This little hippo that I did was the first time I tried out applique on the embroidery machine.  It wasn't perfect, but I think it's so cute.  I've learned a lot since I made these towels.  I think I made these in 2005.

Embroidered Towels

Here are some towels that I embroidered for a customer. The light colored towels are the husband and wife, and the dark towels are for their 5 boys!

And a close up of the one for the Mama!

Hopefully with a house full of boys, this will help everyone keep their towels straight. :)

Business is Picking Up

So I've been working on promoting by sewing business more and it seems to be working.  I haven't done anything super over the top yet, but I have done some word of mouth advertising and facebook stuff.  Since I started trying to push it more, I've received orders for several things...

A hooded towel:

Eight personalized keychains:

Digitizing a design for a customer.  I don't have a picture of any digitizing I've done.
Seven embroidered towels:

And a pillowcase dress:

So, I'm staying busy trying to get all these orders going. :)  I've finished some of them but still have lots more to go.  And of course I'm hoping to get more orders as people continue to hear about the business. 

These pictures that I've posted are previous things that I've made.  I'm hoping to get pictures up of some of the orders I'm working on, but right now we're having some camera issues.

Burp Cloth

Well, I have been sewing some. Just not taking the time to post it on the blog. But, I kinda did something big this weekend. I posted my first item on etsy. I'm scared and excited at the same time. I made this burp cloth for a friend. I am really happy with the way it turned out and figured I'll give it a try on etsy and see if anything happens. I love the ruffle on the bottom. I hope Baby Genesis like it too.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/46004896/personalized-burp-cloth-with-ruffle

Birthday Present

I made this hooded towel for a birthday boy. It was his 1st birthday - he was born on St. Patrick's Day.