New DIY Kits on Etsy, Plus the Hats are Back …

Posted on October 16, 2014 by Tasha

Hello all! I’ve been using my computer time for the last week or so working on brand new stuff … if you can call ideas that have been rattling around in my head for a year or more “brand new” … but they now exist, in real life! Or at least on the internet.

Brand new: instructions and materials so that you can make the some of the scarves and blankets I’ve been making the last couple of seasons from cashmere ribbing! I’ve laid it out for you, with lots of tips on sewing the ribbings, plus directions for three projects. Make one of these, or make a totally new design of your own!

The color combos I found in the ribbing box are pretty great. Get these now if you love them—there’s more good stuff in there, but the next batch will be different.

Plus, Fiddleheads hats are back for fall. There are some new, incredibly cute pictures of children who shall remain nameless modeling them. It’s worth a click just to see them all. And—sigh—I think I said I wasn’t going to do this, but then I suddenly needed to, so I did—I modeled the adult size myself. The kids are SO much cuter!

I’ll be back soon, with more cool stuff!

A Cashmere Scrap Rainbow Baby Blanket—Selfless Sewing

Posted on August 29, 2014 by Tasha

After reading this post in the spring on Ginger Makes, I started thinking about how I do actually sew things for other people sometimes, and maybe I should post about some of them. Especially when I actually go outside and take pictures before mailing the thing off.

Sometimes, I sew a blanket for the new arrivals in the families of my nearest and dearest. The last several have been made from the scraps from these hats (quick shameless promotion: they’ll be back in my Etsy shop soon! Ask for them at your favorite kids’ store. Get me in touch with that store! Ok, I’m done).

I can’t get rid of these ribbings, they’re so irresistibly textural, and so vibrantly colored, and so buttery soft, basically perfect for a new baby’s blanket as far I’m concerned. Mamas, did I mention already felted = machine washable? (Just like the hats.)

I used the mock-serger stitch on my machine, for strength plus some stretch. With these materials, the seams will never be 100% ripple-free, so I’m going with “ripples are part of the charm.” In lieu of extra decoration, I switched thread colors at intervals as I went, and it made a big difference in the look, I love that the thread isn’t distracting from the ribbing colors.

We’re actually going to meet the recipient of this blanket today! I’m really excited.

One thing I love about making things for other people, besides the warm fuzzy feeling, is that it’s often an opportunity for me to try out a new idea and be more creative, thinking about things from another perspective.

What about you? How do you feel about making things for others?

Holiday Hat Giveaway

Posted on December 4, 2012 by Tasha

6-18 months 2

About time, don’t you think? I have two more of my fuzzy little Fiddleheads hats to give away! They are made from recycled cashmere, super soft, eco friendly, and easy care. These two will fit most kids from 6 to 18 months old.

Winning is easy! Just leave a comment saying which hat you’d like and one thing you like about it – be creative! You can get additional entries by mentioning this contest on your own blog, facebook, twitter, etc., just leave another comment with the link.

6-18 months 1

This contest is open to anyone around the world, although delivery in time for Christmas outside the US is not guaranteed. I will keep it open until midnight Saturday (Dec 8) mountain time, and choose a winner using a random number generator.

Good luck! Hope you’re having a great start to your week!

Update: this contest is closed now, but you can still get your very own custom hat from my Etsy shop!

It’s the Colors . . .

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Tasha

Right now it’s the time of year for big orders from the shops that sell my little fuzzy hats. After 400 or so of these suckers all told so far, you’d think I would be sick of them. I still like this design (if I only I could come up with a few more that were as cute and efficient!) but mostly, what keeps me coming back is:

I love picking colors that don’t just go together, they make each other sing. These remind me of a dusky southwest sunset. This is what I do when I’m making the hats, I stare at the colors. Luckily, using recycled materials means there are new colors every time, new ones to find and play with.

As a kid, I would spend hours looking through my mom’s embroidery floss, not really wanting to make anything, just enjoying the colors, they each seemed so vivid and lovely, they lived grouped together in their families in neatly numbered plastic bags. I remember wishing there was fabric, or something I wanted to use, in all those colors, but not knowing what I would do with it if there was. I’m still figuring that out . . .

Grateful Giveaway Part 1

Posted on June 28, 2012 by Tasha

Hello! I am back at home, and feeling pretty good about things. First of all, I just spent a week with some of my favorite women in the world, making all kinds of amazing things and stretching myself to a rare extent (more about this a little later). If that’s not enough to be grateful for, I came back to flowers and a love note from my amazing husband. Overall, I’m feeling pretty good about the life I’ve chosen. So I thought I would share the love by giving away two of my Fiddleheads hats (and two more to come later)!

I have these extra hats because of a bad situation which is slowly resolving. A long time ago now I sent some of my wares, including these hats, which were a brand new idea at the time, to a store in another state which turned out to be scamming artists and taking the money for their own pockets. The slightly better part of the story is that artisans, communicating through Etsy, figured out what was going on, and the shop was shut down and contents seized by the attorney general of MO. The much better part is that after much, much time in bureaucratic limbo, I was finally notified that they had “determined some of these goods to be” mine (maybe because they had my name and phone number on the tags?). And after so much time had gone by that I had given up again, I received a box in the mail with a fair number of bags (appearing on Etsy this fall) and hats inside! I doubt I will ever get any money out of this, but getting my unsold stuff back feels like a huge win.

When I first started making these hats, I didn’t realize how stretchy they would be, and I had more sizes. Bryan always laughs at me for forgetting things I’ve made, I forgot that I used to make four sizes instead of three, and I forgot that I started out writing all the fabric tags myself! I now think these two would fit around 3 – 9 months, on average of course. As you can see there’s a classic blue and pink, each one with two tones, and more texture in the lighter color. They are made from all recycled cashmere, making them super soft, eco-friendly, and washable. I have made every one of the now many many of these that are around the country and the world, and I still love this design.

One of these would make a perfect gift for someone having a baby soon, as it should still fit when winter rolls around up here in the Northern hemisphere.

All you have to do to win is leave a comment! Tell me which hat you would like and (yes this is for my marketing, small biz needs it too) what change having one of these would bring to your life/experience. Open to anyone around the world, so tell your friends! I will close the contest in just over a week, at 9 am Friday June 6 Arizona time. I’ll choose a random winner for each hat and ship them out soon thereafter.

Hope you’re having a grateful week!