4 shoulder Bags
5 large totes
5 quilted purses
4 handbags
3 pleated bags
8 wine bags
7 lunch totes
6 pillows
10 cuffs
12 zip pouches
6 kids' backpacks
15 Halloween and Christmas Gift bags...
I feel like I'm missing something....oh yeah!
YOU!
Hope to see you out at the craft fair this weekend!!! Booth 136!
P.S. Thanks to Jess, my partner in crime, for the great pics of our booth at the Hatch Market a few months ago! ;)
One week from today is the start of The Shakerag Festival in Peachtree City, only my second craft show. Really, my first busy craft show. The Shakerag Festival is in it's 34th year and always draws a good crowd, so I am really excited.
Therefore, I have really been trying my best to build up some extra inventory and of course everything in the world has happened in the past 3 weeks so now I am really feeling the crunch.
So, my poor sewing room has bore the brunt of my creative chaos and I actually had to take an evening and tidy up because anything and everything was getting lost the second I walked through the door.
Some really great perks of that though is that I discovered that the self-induced fabric diet I have been on lately has been paying off since I am pretty much left with only solids and small print fabric ( this means I get to do some major shopping soon! )
I also found all the zippers I have purchased in the past just in time to make pouches and lunch totes.
On the downside, my scrap pile has really gotten out of control. See that trunk under all the fabric? It's full of scraps too. 
I'm not sure what to do with all of this. And don't say "make a quilt" because I also have 3 quilts in various stages of completion that I haven't been able to work on in months. I'm thinking the big pieces will get organized and all the little stuff will make great beds for the kitties. Maybe they will quit sleeping on my fabric if I make them a bed.Oh. I also made my own new business cards because I didn't realize I was out until it was too late. I think they aren't too bad for some do-it-yourself cards, but ordering some better ones is definitely in the near future.
So, that's it for now. Maybe my sewing machine has cooled off enough for me to get back to work. I hope to see some of you out at the festival!
When I first started my Etsy shop in March of last year I started with a whole different line of products, a whole different mindset, and a whole different time schedule. The kids had just turned 2 and they also were still on 2 naps a day and my husband was still working for a company that liked to work him 80 hours a week. I was merely a mom of twins who had just emerged from the fog of early motherhood and found herself in a town with no friends or family, a husband who was never home, and a desire to find something to do besides change diapers and talk to babies all day.
A year and a half ago my grand plan was to make quilts to sell. Beautiful quilts with lots of machine quilting and intricate piecing. I would do little things too to fill in the gaps; coasters, pincushions, placemats, etc. The problem was that I was running out of spare time. The kids had dropped their second nap, my husband had quit his job and was now job-hunting, and I had taken a very part-time job with my neighbor and now friend Jessica who does beautiful wedding photography. I was suddenly busy! Then one day I came across a pattern in a quilting magazine for these cute little grab bags where the handles looped through each other. An hour and a half later I had my first one and by the end of the day I had made 2 more. I had found the perfect craft for me. I could still be intricate and beautiful but on a much smaller scale. I soon swapped my focus from quilts to bags and started watching the sales trickle in. Slowly at first and then more and more. I added my bags to the gift shop of my parents winery ( Thanks Mom!) and just recently participated in my first craft show. Now I find that spare time is again very hard to come by, but not because of my kids, it's because of you! I am busier than I have ever been and it is a wonderful feeling.
So because of all this and because very soon I will be adding some very professional tags to my products and maybe even an actual ".com" address, I am changing the name of my little side business to JodieMo Bags ( thanks for the suggestion Jess!). I think it fits much better with who I am now and I hope you don't mind. Thanks for all the support!
Right now I am working like a crazed woman getting ready for an upcoming craft fair here in town. The Shakerag Craft Fair in Peachtree City. If you are in the area please come by! The dates are September 19th and 20th! If you need me before then, you can find me in my sewing room.
See you soon!
I have been trying for weeks to get a treasury. Finally, I scored one. Please go by and check it out and tell me what you think and support these beautiful artists!
The start of a new school year is just around the corner and I can almost hear the collective sighs of mothers everywhere breathing a prayer of thanks. Because even though we love our children and we love spending time with them, I think most will agree that much more gets done in daily life when they are in school for the majority of the day. Now, my kids aren't in school yet, but we do pay a small fortune to send them to a Mommy's Day Out a couple times a week. Last year was their first year to go and my first experience packing lunches for toddlers. Who knew it could be so time consuming! Especially at 7am before a full cup of coffee. But this year I'm ready and I've designed new lunch bags for them. Here are 3 that I have just finished for a friend of mine. Well, two of them are hers and the other is for sale.
They are washable, insulated and have a zipper to keep everything in! Oh! And they are really cute too.
I ran across this brand new cool website today just for Etsy Shop owners called Soopsee. It's basically a place for you to put all of your promotional activities and your shop listings onto one website easily. It's SUPER EASY for the html challenged like me. You can go here to visit the site I made in about 30 minutes.
