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Tuesday, February 16, 2010

The birth of my bundles of joy!

Wow - what a day!! Yesterday one of my favorite thrift stores had a 50% off sale, so I went to buy recycled sweaters for my upcoming spring production! I bought mmmmaaaaannnnnyyy sweaters! The colors were so wonderful. So the next move is to then organize and prepare.

Luckily the Olympics is on!! So today I spent the day cutting apart sweaters, organizing them by color, letting them influence me, and then sorting through them to make bundles, all while enjoying the sports of winter!

At the end of the day, my floor was covered with these wonderful "bundles" of color. Each bundle has all the pieces for reconstructing a sweater; big strips for sleeves, ribbing for backs, necklines for bodices, strips for the skirts and (for coats) chuncks for the the hem trim. Most of the bundles were influenced by one fabric of a multi-color tweed, stripe print that set the scheme for the rest of the colors. Each bundle/sweater ends up having parts from about 6 sweaters, so having a huge number of sweaters to chose from.is really important.

Soon my little bundles of joy will become full grown reconstructed sweaters! I am actually thinking about just posting some of the bundles on my Etsy site, so my customers could choose the color bundle they like, and then I could make their custom coat from that.... not sure if people could visualize or not though... will have to think that through more. Comments about that idea?

5 comments:

prayer bedes said...

Ooo! Ahh! I can't wait to see them done up! Your constructed patterns are part of the unique design of each piece, so I would say to make them first before listing them.

Spring cardigans would be my first choice! We could even wear them now for a breath of spring during these cold and blah winter months up north. =)

dogdazzle said...

Have them made, rather than bundles. It's too hard for many of us to visualize!

Janet Metzger, Artist said...

Wow..it must take you forever to wash them all..do you prefer to do that b4 or after the garment is completed? Great haul ;-)

jill said...

Janet - I wash everything AFTER they are sewn. I do this to clean them, but also to "road test" all of the serged seams, the color fastness, etc. This is also why I wash and dry them by machine, not hand.

jan said...

I like the bundle idea as I often find myself thinking "I like this style but prefer the colors of that one". And then the whole size thing comes into play. I certainly think listing a few bundles would be worthwhile.