Kitchen Stitchen Opening This Friday!

Announcing the opening date of my new Etsy shop Kitchen Stitchen : Friday January 16, 2009. After much planning, sewing and excitement, I am finally ready to start listing items in my new shop! Here is a REAL preview of what you will see in the shop starting tomorrow...

For a look at ALL the fabric choices take a look at the shop's Flickr site.

To give you all an insight on how this whole concept came to be, I'll give you a little background on the process.

As I mentioned earlier, I was getting a little frustrated with my first shop. Making totes and handbags was fun, but very time consuming. My shop was kind of a hodge podge of whatever I felt like making and had very little consistency. I decided to make some smaller items for a couple of craft shows and noticed that the smaller items were snatched right up, but people hardly even looked at the larger items. Around the same time, I read an article about how to have a successful Etsy shop. One thing that stuck out to me was to find your niche. Lots of people sold bags. I came up with the idea of creating a shop which specialized in a type of item. Somehow I landed on making kitchen linens. I had seen plenty of people selling kitchen type items, but none (since then I have found one) that makes all kitchen items. Plus these items don't take near as long to sew as bags! Much easier to get motivated!

I wanted to do this right, I wanted to plan it all out. I already had ideas for towels and potholders. Of all my towels I LOVED the waffle weave variety. There was no question that a nice waffle weave would be what I'd start with. I had also thought of a "different" way to add the decorative fabric than what I'd seen. As for potholders, that was a no brainer. I have one absolute favorite that I use at home and I would try to make them of that design (which turned out to be quite a challenge)!

Next I found the wonderful graphic designer Kelly of YellowMagpie and hired her to help design my logo and shop, including business cards and labels. I gave her my idea of a teapot with swirling steam and the steam spelling out "Kitchen Stitchen". She helped me with color choices, design options, fonts and worked with me until it was just what I wanted which is what you see at the top of this post. If you need a banner, avatar, business card etc... design, I highly recomend Kelly, she was so easy to work with, very friendly and completed versions in a timely manner. She loves what she does and wants to make her clients happy.

At the same time I sought out a source for towels, went shopping on Etsy and Ebay for fabrics and tested out swatches of terry cloth until I found the perfect quality.

The fabric and materials rolled in, I pre-washed and dried everything. Ironed, cut and started sewing. I then bought a walking-foot for my sewing machine which was a life-saver. It is so nice for thick fabrics, not to mention several layers of thick fabrics! Once I had the towels done, I was off working on the potholders. These were not so easy. The binding took me a while to perfect, but now I have it down to a science. Shortly after the towels were done the labels from Jennifer of JennifersJewels came in, just in time for the potholders. Jennifer's labels are the best, she keeps improving her product and I'm not sure how they can get much better than this. She was quick and the job was seamless. I just gave her my measurements, sent her the file and poof, they were done.

Once all of my initial inventory was complete, it was time to photograph everything. Thanks to our lovely Canon Rebel SLR and mini-lessons from my even more lovely husband, I was able to get that done too.

I've written up descriptions, figured out postage and handling costs and am looking into advertising. And my dear internet friend Crystal will be helping me out with a little something soon too!

Stay Tuned!