It still counts as feedback,

even if it's about something she got for free.

http://letajoy.com/2007/10/31/

Thanks, Leta! Hope you enjoy it!

Signs I'm raising my daughter right

Raggedy Rodeo Baby Quilt pattern page

Raggedy Rodeo Baby Quilt pattern

Even novice quilters can round up this crib-size quilt in a jiffy – it’s made using precut fringed flannel squares, and you don’t even have to take time to make a separate binding. Don’t worry – those impressive-looking prairie points are drop-dead simple!

This pattern calls for pre-fringed flannel squares - a great way to use up the miscellaneous ends of bolts is to make kits for this quilt!

Approximate finished dimensions: 33"x40"

A person with average sewing skills should be able to finish this project in about three naptimes (six hours).

Photo from the pattern directions - trimming the excess to get perfect prairie points.

Pattern includes illustrated directions and suggestions for additional variations on the project. It is packaged in a resealable plastic bag (6"x9"), ready to hang and sell.

Wholesale price: $4.00/pattern
Suggested retail price: $7-$9, or whatever the market will bear in your area

Free shipping on your first order! Shipping charges for subsequent orders will be the actual charges for USPS Priority Mail to your destination.

I am willing to make free samples to display in your shop, if you are willing to provide the materials. Please contact me for more information on this service.

For more information or to place an order, please contact Gretchen Woods at Lazy Mama Designs: lazymamadesigns (at) yahoo (dot) com.

NEW!! You can also place orders through my shop at etsy.com - just convo me with a request, including the number of patterns you'd like to buy, and I can post a custom listing for you at the wholesale price.

Thank you for your interest, and I hope to hear from you soon!

Congratulations to the contest winner!

Congratulations to fellow etsy seller idiomsyncrasies, the winner of the Show Cleveland Some Love! contest, which ended at noon today. For those of you who didn't win the grand prize, watch your e-mail for a consolation offer from the participating shops. And thanks to all of you who participated!

More customer feedback

Awww ...

Thanks for the photo, frippery!

Holiday shopping

Well, we're a week away from the madness called Holiday Shopping Season, and I'm here with two suggestions on how to make it simpler this year:

1. Make them something. Yes, you can. Trust me, if you can sew a straight seam on a sewing machine, or manage to sew a button on by hand, or even make a basic knit stitch, there's something you can make for just about anybody on your list. See those patterns over on the left side of my blog? Anybody could make those, even people who flunked out of home ec and get a rash when words like "seam allowance" and "purl" come up in conversation.
2. Buy handmade. Sure, you can go to the mall, wade through crowds of people, find out that the size you need isn't available, go online, find out that the size isn't available there, and end up getting the person a gift card that they'll lose or forget who gave it to them. Or, you could go online to someplace like etsy.com, where everything you see is in stock and hand-crafted, and you can pick out a thoughtful and unique gift for pretty much everyone on your list. The first place to visit, of course, is http://lazymamadesigns.etsy.com :)

I'll be the first to admit that for the past few years I've been more interested in getting my shopping DONE than in getting it done right. But this year I've taken the pledge, and I'm going to try to stick to it. Okay, my father-in-law may be getting more gift certificates for ammunition from a local store instead of some artsy t-shirt he'd never wear, but I think I can find something for darn near everyone else.

So check it out, and if you're with me on this, take the pledge at www.buyhandmade.org. And pass the word along to your friends, family, and coworkers - make it a great holiday for them, and for the crafters and artists they'll be helping to support. I'll be posting updates to let you know how my shopping is going - feel free to do the same in the comments section of the posts. Thanks, and happy shopping!

Customer feedback

Another high quality receiving blanket - love the larger size (way more practical than blankets under 35 inches square), love the softness, love the option to convert to nursing cover. Highly recommend these blankets to any parent of a newborn! Thanks so much.

See why I love my "job?"

You've entered already, right?

Because you're running out of time to enter the Show Cleveland Some Love! contest at www.clevelandhandmade.com .

Entries will be accepted until midnight on Friday, Oct. 26th. So if you want a shot at winning a $65 credit to use at any participating Cleveland etsy shop, get a move on!

(and buy lots of stuff while you're checking out the shops in order to enter!)

My plans for world domination continue ...

From a fellow Cleveland etsian:

your blankets were a hit at the showers today! and at the first shower, people said "oh! is that a lazy mama!? i saw those in the contest!" so people are seeing and remembering! sweet!

Hurrah! I'm becoming famous, at least among the hundred or so people who have entered the contest!

Reality check

So I'm standing at the sink, thinking about how much stash yarn I've been using up with my various etsy-related knitting projects (and some as-yet-unreleased personal projects, too). "Wow, I may be able to justify buying some nice new yarn next year!"

Um, yeah. Maybe that would be okay, if "using up so much of my stash" didn't mean "I can now almost fit my stash into three large plastic totes without having to sit on them (much)." Shoot.

Must find more projects to use up acrylic yarn in ugly colors. Anybody need some supplies for the old folks' home?

Check it out - I got a treasury on etsy!

http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=12080

No, I'm not in it - I can't be, because I'm administering it. It's got one item from each of the shops participating in the contest ... hopefully this will get us some extra attention. Not that we're doing too badly - last I heard we had more than 50 entries, and that was just by Friday night!

If you haven't entered yet, you can do so at www.clevelandhandmade.com . Prize is a $65 credit to use at any of the 13 participating shops ... and you know you can find some way to spend that, with all of the cool stuff we have!

Yes, they're real - why do you ask?

Shameless self-promotion time (again)

As you may have read already, I'm part of the etsy Cleveland street team. Well, we've decided to try to send a little more traffic to our shops by banding together to hold a contest. Just click on the link above to go to our team homepage, where you can find out all about it. Basically, you just visit our shops, try to find where we've listed our favorite place in Cleveland, fill in a form, and you're entered to win a $65 credit to spend in one of our shops (or a combination of shops, if you prefer).

Of course, while you're visiting our shops is the perfect time to get a headstart on your holiday shopping. Jewelry, purses and bags, hats and scarves, baby gifts - we've got a lot of really cool stuff listed right now. Just remember - our stores sell stuff pretty regularly, so if you see something you really like, go ahead and get it now, as it may not still be there when you come back. Trust me, if you win the contest there will still be plenty of stuff you'd like to buy!

Thanks for your support, and please tell the entry form that you found out about this from lazymamadesigns.blogspot.com - we're having an informal competition to see who steers the most traffic to the contest, and I'm determined to win :)

You thought I was kidding about the fuzz?

At least the sucker was cute when I was done:

How disappointing

How disappointing is it to be working with a material you hate, a material that sheds long pink fibers on every surface it touches (and some it doesn't), fibers which pretty much weld themselves onto places you really wish they wouldn't, like your new sweater and black pants. So you're working with the pink stuff, and after a rough start, things are clicking and your piece is coming together remarkably well. After finishing the last seam flawlessly, you flip over the piece to do the overcasting around the edges to keep the Pink Fibers of Death from taking over the world ... and find that you've sewed the pink stuff to the wrong side of the other piece.

Really freakin' disappointing, that how.

Half an hour of seam ripping, 10 minutes of deep breathing, 45 minutes of farting around on other sites trying to get the nerve to go back to it ... and I think I'm ready to resew it. Gah - that's among the most hated words in my vocabulary. Resew. It should have four letters and only be uttered in a gutteral rasp. Of course, most of the words around it usually are, so I guess it evens out.

If you'll excuse me, I have four pounds of pink stuff to pull off of my pants, my sweater, my carpet, my cutting table, my desk, all the pieces for unrelated projects that are within 10' of my sewing machine or cutting table ...

Congrats, Petite!

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=6834301

Her bag made it to the Holy Grail of Treasuries - the main page you see when you go to etsy.com! Now if someone would just buy the beautiful thing...

My new new favorite in the shop

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=7383337

See what happens when I save fabric for two years and finally find a project for it? Oh, how I love it. I should have priced it higher so it wouldn't sell and I could love it and hug it and name it Earl.

Then again, I've got some interesting scraps left over from those prairie points, and a ton of the polka dot left over. Can you say, coordinating companion quilt? I can!

Unreasonably excited

So etsy has these things called treasuries, where members can call out items they think are cool, or fit a theme, or whatever. There's only a fixed number of them active at one time, and it's very competitive to get one once they're open, so it's kind of a rare thing to appear in one.

http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=10967

Wahoo! My first treasury appearance, and it's my favorite item in my shop right now! Yay, Lori!

Sorry I've been quiet this week ...

... but JoAnn's had a sale on flannel. You know what that means ... more Swaddled With A Kiss blankets in the etsy shop soon!

Plus, I'm finishing a quilt pattern that Birds of a Feather commissioned to sell along with their pre-fringed flannel squares. Can't show you any of the in-progress shots until I talk it over with Elizabeth to make sure she's okay with it, but let's just say it's way outside my usual comfort range in terms of colorway ... and it's got prairie points. Me, voluntarily doing prairie points - it's like a miracle.

Of course, I looked at the pattern when I was done and said to myself, "Lazy Mama, that would look lovely with giant gerbera daisys and prairie points in hot pink, teal, and bright purple!" Good thing I had a stack of fabric in those colors waiting for inspiration to strike. It's been waiting since 2005, actually, which is both sad (poor lonely fabric) and a miracle (that I haven't cannibalized any of the stack for other projects).

Oh, and I've got a teeny tiny knitting project I've been working on before bed at night -- miniature sweaters as Christmas ornaments! My god, they're so cute, and I can finish the entire front of a sweater in - no kidding - like 15 minutes. If only I could scale up the size of the needles so I could finish a real sweater in the same amount of time .... I'd be knitting with telephone poles.

My sisters in all things Cleveland, crafty, and etsy are banding together to have a contest!

The contest will run from Friday, October 12th through Friday, October 26th. People entering the contest will need to look in the profiles of Cleveland etsy members to see what place each shop loves in Cleveland. Fill in a quick form, and you're entered to win a shopping spree at any of the participating stores!

The site isn't up yet, so I can't link to it, but mark your calendars - this one should be fun!

In the meantime, you can get a jump on the contest by visiting my etsy site and noting what place I specifically mention in my shop profile. Oh, and as long as you're there anyway, buy something ;)