Wednesday 17 September 2014

Reinvention, Recycling, Re-purposing ..........

I have so many textiles in my collection. At the end of our dining table is a blanket chest with my vintage linen collection (three more tablecloths expected early next week - Shh!!) - it won't fit anywhere else! I have three linen baskets of yarn (No - mis-counted - four linen baskets of yarn), shrunk in 'vac-pac' bags, in the conservatory and the cupboards above our wardrobe have more - as does one of the drawers under our bed. One tall shelving unit and two chests of drawers are full of new fabric. My craft room has four large boxes of hand-dyed fibers and my collection of yarn 'snippets' for felting. Textiles for recycling are freshly washed and then store in large vac-pac bags (T-shirts, fleece, denim, other) - some are under the sofa in the conservatory, others in my craft room. I love creating things for our home - often combining new materials with 're-incarnated' ones - but I have too many our own use. So I have decided to offer some items for sale.

The focus of my work will remain embroidery. Embroidered vintage linens and left-overs from other projects have featured in my work for some time.





I shall soon open a new shop section for non-embroidered items.

I am just finishing a work basket like these - the new one in cream and rust:



The re-decoration of our 'breakfast' room is almost complete- I hope it will make a good backdrop for photos on sunnier days. The remnants of wall paper on this photo have now vanished and the wall has been filled and sanded so many times I'm surprised that there's any plaster left! The crisp, very white finish we now have doesn't look right with the lovely pale yellow in this blanket, so I've been working on making it square-shaped. It  needs another few squares and a lovely border.I'm going to do a trial wash on a couple of sample squares today, and, if all goes well, this will also be listed as a small throw/lap blanket. 



I'll never be able to produce these items in large numbers but I hope I'll find enough customers to help me re-home my stash in this way. 

In order to have some consistency in 'branding' ( yuk!! that phrase doesn't sit well with the way I feel about my work - sounds too 'hard-faced' and commercial, although perhaps this is why my Paypal account doesn't overflow!!) I may try producing some hand-embroidered 'Lynwoodcrafts' labels for these items. What do you think?

4 comments:

  1. I love your items and always recognise them straight away as yours as you have such a distinct style. I like your idea for "branding" (yes I hate that word too) but it will take a lot of time. How about you embroider some pretty labels and then photograph them and have them made into business cards that you can turn into labels. So it has your typical embroidery on but won't take you ages to produce? Moo cards do beautiful cards and the narrow ones would be great for small items. Only one thing if you choose matte cards they turn out darker than expected.

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    1. Hi Hannelore! Thank you for taking the time to read and comment and thank you for your common sense! You are right of course! I always feel that people expect embroidery from me and that I am in some way 'taking a short cut' if I produce something 'not embroidered'. I had thought of getting sew in labels produced from my embroidery in some way - but this sounds expensive. Your practical suggestion is brilliant - although I'll probably be dis-owned if I use Moo (I'm sure their cards are lovely but my husband is a printer - which just makes me even dafter for not thinking of this for myself!!) Sometimes it takes someone else to take a step back and look at things affresh and then be kind enough to take the time to help. Thank you again!

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  2. Love all your work, inspirational.

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