I never did say that I sold one of my diggers, but I did! And on my birthday to boot! My little floral digger was sent off to Jen at scissorspaperglue and I sent the polka dot digger off to New York yesterday morning. I knew I wanted to make the packaging for my toys and after a little brainstorming I came up with this simple drawstring bag. It’s made of muslin and I figured out how to do french seams just so I wouldn’t have to line it (they’re not really hard at all you just have to get over putting wrong sides together, but corners I had trouble with–anyone out there have any advice?). I also get to use my automatic button holer (holer, really? hole maker maybe?) which makes me feel like I know what I’m doing–always a treat. At first I wanted to embroider “my digger,” but found some passable stamps at Joann’s instead. It gives me a place to put the name of my shop as well. And I finally got my felt rocks up in the shop and made a small linen drawstring bag for them too.

The rocks turned out nice, I think, but they are less for the diggers and more for decoration really. I really like the moss covered ones and I may just do a couple set of those. But back to the drawstring bags. For a while now I’ve had the idea to make simple drawstring bags for toys. There are just so many damn toys and our toys are getting smaller and more complicated now–they need to be contained! The bags would be made of linen or a linen/cotton blend or even just muslin, and maybe lined or not lined, and with trains or blocks or dinosaurs or animals on the front either stitched or appliqued. And the reason they aren’t made yet is because I can’t decide on anything. Is linen too precious for a toy bag? Is muslin too cheap? Would embroidery get snagged or does applique look too slapped together? Would you even buy a toy bag? I need some feedback from the mamas (and papas) out there. I have a little craft fair coming up in march (!) and I think this would be something I could make a bunch of and that would go over well (the craft fair is also a children’s clothes and toys consignment sale–it’s called half pint resale and my very talented and energetic friend put it all together!). So leave a comment and help me decide, because I’ve been thinking about these silly little bags for too long now.

I am very excited to announce that my shop is up and running!  The little diggers have been in bits and pieces all week, but I finally sat down with all the parts today.  And as my daughter built tower after tower after tower with her blocks, I sewed button joint after button joint right next to her.  Setting up an etsy shop was a little intimidating at first, not because of the site itself–it’s fantastic–but because I had to sit down and describe myself and what I make.  And make people want to buy it.  I have no idea how to do this, so I went with boring ol’ descriptions of the first three then when I got to the pink digger I laid it on thick.  I was only going to make three to start with anyway, but then I saw this little bit of hot! pink! vintage! linen in my scrap bag I cut into it without thinking twice.  Because how fantastic would it be if a cute indie rock boy out there gave his cute indie rock girlfriend my pink digger for valentine’s day.   I guess that’s an odd daydream to have, but I think that’s what mothers of small children do: daydream.  Most of what we say could be recorded and just played back over and over again all day, “Stop. stop. sit down. sit down. don’t play with your food. don’t rub your toast on your head. don’t put playdough in your brother’s ears.” I always wondered why I had to say, “MOM!” so many times before she heard me.  Now I don’t hear my daughter until the third or fourth mom.  So (to get out of this tangent) I’ve been day dreaming about this little shop all week and now here it is!  yay.