Things to make – some reflections on my first bits of making to sell

This time last year I was four months into the New Years Resolution Club, a monthly club for ladies who wanted to achieve goals. We set ourselves targets and then during the following month tried to make progress on that target. During the first few sessions we were encouraged to create moodboards and think about the end goal we were working towards, to give that main idea the time and attention to develop.

Back then I was still trying to find the one thing I loved more than anything else & most of my workbook is filled with butterflies and images of sewing et la.

I do love sewing but the problem is that so do lots of other people. I tried to get a stall at a craft fair selling my wares and was rejected, they had lots of other people doing a similar thing.

Then along came the opportunity to sell in a local craft shop and all of a sudden I wasn’t thinking about what I loved to make anymore I was thinking about what I thought would sell. More intricate items like the commissions I had enjoyed making in the past were out straight away as I knew the percentage of the price that the shop took meant to keep my pieces affordable I had to use budget materials and not charge for my time and worst of all I didn’t know what my new customers wanted so I made things in alien styles. Some of these pieces I’m actually quite proud as they pushed me out of my comfort zone of but for most I set myself up for a fall.

Keen to try another avenue I tried Etsy, it was a saturated market for sewn goods and jewellery and the pieces I had made were in all sorts of other mediums as well, I didn’t understand anything about writing descriptions, photography or how to promote myself without feeling self conscious.

So now I’m going back to those lessons from the New Years Resolution Club. Do what you love: Sewing is definitely still up there but this year so is glass & so it is to both of these I will be giving my attention.

I’m booked in for a weekend course and a ten week evening course in stained glass to practice creating my own designs and perfecting my soldering.

On the sewing front I have finally bought myself new a sewing machine which vastly outdoes my old machine (bought for £80 just before I started GCSE textiles). I will finally have a workspace in the house to give these two things time and am trying to stick to the William Morris way of doing things in not creating anything that is not beautiful or useful.

I’m hoping that from this moment my output will be both. In time (and at the moment I’m not sure how much time) I hope to create a page on the blog filled with things I have enjoyed & loved to make and for the first time will take commissions to make special things for special people. Anything that I make, am pleased with but does not have an owner will go into my etsy shop. But I’m not sure what or when that will be and for once actually not having that planned or the deadline looming feels like a very good thing.