zhouk design blog

Absent

I know I’ve been absent lately.  It’s quite difficult to find the time to get creative when you are working extremely long hours.  The “real” job is going really well though, so all-in-all I can’t complain.  Now I just need to find the discipline to try to complete at least one bag a week (notice how I added “try” in there?, hey, I need at least one exit strategy in case it doesn’t work out the way I hope! :).

Keeping Up

How I’ll get there: I started lining up fabrics for some new cuts today.  I think it will be easier to dive into sewing with a bunch of projects all lined up and ready to go.  I’ve had these fabrics all thought out in my head for weeks, but I think having the actual cuts made will allow me to avoid making those last-minute design changes which take up so much time (even though they’re oh-so fun).  Maybe I’ll sacrifice having new designs for a little while, but I figure that Zhouk is young enough and I’ll have plenty of time to experiment with new designs later.  I also signed up for my etsy name to make sure I had it secured and ready to go once I get a few more bags done.  Now I just need to figure out how many is the right amount to launch the store? 5? 10? 30?  I think I’ll shoot for 10 to 15 for now, to have a decent selection for people to choose from and to give me some time in between sales to sew more.  I’m curious, what do you think?

The Secret Project

Since getting hooked on sewing I feel like I should be making gifts instead of buying them.  This is good and bad.  I love being able to give personalized gifts, I just think it makes the person feel that the extra effort you took is an example of how much you care.  I know it’s not going to be possible to do this for everyone I would like to, and that doesn’t mean I don’t care as much about them, it just means my day doesn’t have that many hours in it!  But I was able to accomplish at least one of the super secret gift projects I have been dying to make this weekend.  I can only share a snapshot though, you’ll have to wait until I actually give the gift to see the finished piece ;0.

a sneak peak at the secret project

lots of color in the secret project

New Fabrics

A few weeks ago, my friend Jen, over at Junk Into Funk-tion graciously gave me some of this lovely fabric, which I already have lined up for this week’s cuts.  Jen has an amazing knack for finding beautiful reclaimed materials!   I have the perfect fabric to use with these and am so thankful to Jen for sharing some of her excess with me!  These are quality fabrics and will work perfectly for bags.  Thanks Jen!

washed and ready to sew!

Other news

Link had surgery to remove a mast cell tumor. Luckily it turned out to be benign, basically the tissue got aggravated by something and the cells reacted.  He’s been bandaged up for 11 days, sometimes with the light-bulb cone, sometimes without.  The sutures get removed on Tues, thank goodness, we can’t take any more of antsy, bored, hyper puppy, the poor guy needs some serious exercise already! We cheated a little and took him with us on a short run today and he did absolutely fine.  A couple days ago though, he wasn’t so happy.  His buddies came out to play for a few minutes but his paw was too sore to romp around in the back yard yet, so we had to keep them separated.  Mac and Dolly were very concerned, as you can see.

That’s it for now, leave some comments, share this with others and check back next weekend for more :)

March 2nd, 2009 | Tags: projects, sewing | Category: New Stuff, Ramblings |  Print This Post |  Email This Post | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL