Say I WAS to open an Etsy store . . .

what should I make? And how do I not rip off everyone else's creative ideas?

This has been my dilemma since I mused on this with a friend ages ago that I would like to open up a shop someday.

The other factors: money (investing in materials is quite an undertaking when you don't know if/when anything will sell) and time (as you'll recall I have 2 kids now and still work from home for ~15 hours a week at the moment, maybe trying to bump that up a bit more in the future as Kee-ku gets older).

I get a lot of enjoyment out of creating things, but I mostly get my ideas from scouring the web for inspiration and thinking to myself, "I could probably do that myself!" A lot of patterns (most, in fact) explicitly say something to the effect of, "Use this as much as you want for your personal/gift use, but do not sell anything made from this pattern." A real bummer since there are a lot of cute patterns out there that, were that stipulation not in place, I feel like I could crank out several of them and get some business (hello, that bunny?)

Anyway, I'm stumped. Someday I would like to open an Etsy shop for real and make creative things and get paid for it. But for now I don't know how to go about it at all. And there's the whole money and time thing.

Any ideas? It'd be really swell to get paid to do something so fun.

Oh, also I think I should probably be a bit better of a sewist before I attempt to sell stuff to unsuspecting strangers on the internet.

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On the Fly: Bibs

I realize it's been awhile since I've posted about anything creative I've been up to. Believe me, it's been hard to squeeze much in lately. I have managed to get to a few things though:

1) I finished the quilt top of the blanket I'm making for Kee-ku that I started talking about back here. Ok, so I finished it awhile ago and even blogged about it here , but I never managed to get a photo up to show everyone. Let me end the suspense:
I've still got to add the backing and the binding and quilt it. Maybe posting the picture will get my butt in gear on it. As I mentioned before, it's a bit wonky . . . and I'm still fine with it.

2) After making the decision to ditch my company's annual BBQ in favor of my niece's 1st Birthday(!), I realized I had the cutest little pattern in my stash just waiting for the right recipient:
I love the tail! I can't believe it matched so perfectly with the colors I picked out for the bunny's little "binky". I bought the yarn ages ago and made a scarf out of it which, though I loved the colors, was way too fuzzy for me and I ended up giving it away. A remnant still remained in my yarn basket and found new life in this little bunny's tail. I love when that happens.

3) After Kee-ku's baby shower (forgot to blog about it . . . I'll work on that later), Boo-la sent me home with Kee-ku and hung onto Little Miss for the evening so I could get some stuff done. Among other things, I was able to make some new bibs for her that should hold up much better than the ones she had been using. I stole the design directly from her old bibs which I bought at Ikea awhile back. I had some tablecloth fabric and clear vinyl left over from my changing pad project, and I used that for the backing of the bibs and the overlay. Then I just dug into the stash and pulled out some pieces for the decorative part. Some velcro and bias tape later and there you have it. (The fabric on the right may look familiar. . . I WAY overbought my inspiration fabric for the aforementioned bunny):So what's up next? Stay tuned. For awhile. Because I don't know when I'm going to get a chance to sew again.

Hopefully soon. :)

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