Saturday, September 26, 2009

Sewing for Hire

At long last! Several months ago, I advertised on Craigslist that I am available for custom sewing jobs, and within just a few hours, a sweet girl had emailed me. She was expecting her first child, a little girl, and had purchased a custom nursery set from a friend that included a crib bumper, skirt, and window treatment. But she wanted to finish out her nursery with a quilt, rocking chair seat cushions, and a standard pillow sham to use when she converted her daughter's crib into a toddler bed. Fortunately, the fabric was still readily available in town, so I got to work!

Here is the crib with the bedding in it (^).


The pillow sham (^) turned out great! I don't do monogramming, because I don't have a machine, but there's a wonderful Christian family-owned business in town where I buy my machines, and they have a monogramming service.


Here's the quilt all spread out (^). It's difficult to tell in this photo, but the binding is in a contrasting stripe fabric, and it looks so wonderful. I could have done the binding myself, but with all that we have going on, I chose to have a quilt shop (owned by a good friend's mom) do it for me. I am very happy with that decision!!


I also made rocking chair seat cushions (^). I had to start from scratch, carving a cushion in the shape of the seat from a large piece of foam, and then I covered it. The cording and covered buttons are the stripe fabric, and the cushion is the same toile as the bedding.


She also had a child-sized rocking chair that had been her husband's as a child (^)! I made a miniature cushion to match the adult chair.

I also made a green gingham hamper liner for her daughter's laundry hamper, but don't have a photo of that, because hampers are pretty basic!

All in all, I had such a wonderful time doing this nursery for my first real client! We have quite a lot going on right now, so I'm sadly not taking in any more jobs for a little while. But it's nice to know that I can go back to this when I choose!