A method to my madness.....

It's taken me about 10 days to make these- 11 different sewing caddies for the Etsy shop. Each caddy has about 13 pieces of fabric and various assorted doo-dads involved. It took me 2 days just to fussy- cut them all out. (I cut out 14, I still have 3 to make but my fingertips are so sore from sewing on binding that I am taking a much needed little break.)

All of these were sewn with stash fabrics, I didn't have to buy anything except more snaps. I tried to make a nice assortment, not just ones that I like. lol You know, bright gaudy ones.... I threw in a couple of grown up ones, too, like the golden brown one and the Authentic black one and the light blue one.

This is the inside of one- maybe you can see why it takes me so long to make them, but I think I've finally figured out a way to streamline the process a bit.

I work on the accessories upstairs until I get to a point where there's handwork involved, then I move downstairs and watch the Olympics with Jim, or something else that we've recorded. (We really like having a DVR!) I call this "my homework." It helps keep him entertained too and not feeling so neglected.
I do turning, basting, gathering, wrapping (like on the hair elastics), etc, and eventually the hand sewing part of the binding. Then I go back upstairs and sew with the machine or iron on the fusible Velcro or do the assembly portion of the program.

When I'm working on so many, organization is important, especially because Nosey Parker is in a horrible stage right now of being kind of rambunctious and destructive. Nothing is safe from her and I can't even leave my typical piles of things lying around like I usually would.

I make up little kits for each caddy when I am doing a bunch at one time. This way I know that I have everything I need to complete the project, the kits hold the little things as I complete them and also the things I haven't used yet, like the binding, the Velcro, the cat collar buckle, buttons, I even make up little containers with all the snap components in them (not shown). Since I live 25 miles from the nearest shop where I can get most of my "ingredients", it's important to me to know I've got everything I need before I start. Otherwise I get stalled and I just hate that. I had 14 of these bags on the table and SOME LITTLE MONSTER decided they were toys and batted them and chewed on them and I found them all over the place. Now I have to hook them all together on a chenille stem and tie them to the wall! lol She's so rotten. It's not like she doesn't have 400 toys scattered all over!

And this is my excuse for being so absent lately- I've been sewing my fingers to the bone! I've got all 11 of these in the shop now, that's a record for me and gives my customers great selection, I like that. And hopefully I won't have to make any more of these for a while! At least, not so many at once.

Of course, the tutorial for this caddy can be found over on the sidebar, to the right. And a tip- if you're doing a bunch at once, group them by thread color so you're not always changing the thread. I did 3 with black thread, 3 with blue thread, 5 with brown and I have 3 more to do with black again. I hate changing thread, it's such a waste of time to me, so that's why I do it like this.

There you have a little peek into how I do mass-production. Hope I didn't bore you too much!