Pre-Christmas Squid

An insane amount of Christmas cookies have been baked, spicy nuts have been mixed and jarred and presents have been wrapped. Not much to write or photograph about that so hey, enjoy some squid pictures and enjoy whatever holiday or non-holiday you're celebrating this month. See you soon!

Holiday Squids! Up! Up!

Fall and Winter is my busiest time of year. 

My sewing takes place everywhere.

And I have little piles of finished work hanging around waiting to be packaged.

So once again I am listing my Holiday Squid early so you can get a head start on your shopping. Also, this gives me a head start on my sewing. All of them are Made to Order and will take 2 weeks for squid and 3 weeks for Squidtivity. As a thank you, please enjoy free shipping on any holiday order. Just enter the code FREESHIPPING during checkout.

You can check out all of the holiday goodness here.

The Plucky Farmerette

The show that I had mentioned last month has ended so I'm pretty tickled to post the shots of the squid I had sent out to Indiana for it. The show was carnival and side show themed so of course this was the first set I made for it:

I was pretty excited about the prospect of making sideshow themed squid and I wanted to make one more. I had recently finished Fruits of Victory and had Farmerettes on the mind. I had never heard of the Woman's Land Army and I highly recommend checking this book out to hear some amazing tales about some amazing women. And since this was a carnival-themed show I was also thinking about the tattoo ladies on the side show circuit. So, put those two together and you get Millie, the tattooed Farmerette.

Millie has spent quite a long time collecting all of her tattoos. She thought it was such a shame to have to hide them due to Victorian sensibilities so she took matters into her own tentacles. You can catch Millie being billed not only has a tattooed lady but as the only tattooed land squid you will see this side of the Mississippi.

I used the same technique for her as I did the sailor squid. I had a lot of fun sketching out agrarian-themed designs but sadly didn't get to use all of them.

And here are some close ups of the tattoos:

The pea pod was my favorite so I decided to make a little headband  to complete the squid.

The inside of the pod contains 4 peas but sadly I couldn't get them to show up very well in the photos. I would really love to do more tattooed squid but I'll probably have to wait until after the holiday rush. I already have some ideas for other themes to embroider on tentacles.

And what the desk looks like day to day.

Although I do always clean up my desk at the end of the day.  I swear.

Squid aprons. How do they work?

Right now in the shop all of my aprons for the year are available.  They also include free shipping until July 25th.  The code is APRONS4ALL (add during checkout).  Here's a little back story on the aprons.

A few years ago my mother-in-law gave me some adorable vintage aprons (along with some slips that I wear constantly under dresses).  A few of them I kept plain and use in the kitchen but there was a lovely orange full-length bib apron that seemed perfect to have a little squid mascot on the shoulder.  So I set to work.

I sold the rest that year at shows and since then I keep an eye out at thrift stores, yard sales and etsy to find suitable aprons.  I like to find ones that have solid colors or subtle prints, that way the squid can shine through in all its glory. I have all of my aprons purchased by the end of December so I can work on them in the winter months since they do take awhile to even prepare for hand sewing the squids onto.  I try to get ones that aren't too damaged or stained but all of them require a good soak, then wash.  After that is a copious amount of ironing.  It takes hours.  Then I repair any holes or tears I find or secure ties.  This year I replaced some of the gold thread that someone had sewn over ricrac.  That was actually pretty fun.

After this I spread out all of the aprons and decide on the color of the squid and what accessories they'll be holding.  This usually takes an evening or two of me sitting on the floor with felt samples and aprons and test squid seeing what I feel would look the best.  Every 20 minutes a certain cat is removed from the area.  Once I decide on everything I make a list of the squid color, accessories and placement on the apron that promptly gets tacked on the to-do board.

Next up is very carefully seam-ripping any pockets off that squid will be attached to and then marveling at the insane amount of hand-work women of yore did so perfectly.  This step is pretty tedious and afterwards requires more ironing.  After that I can begin sewing the squid and accessories.  Then I have piles of this on my desk and various shelves.

After the squid are embroidered on it's back to the ironing board. After this I machine sew all of the pockets back in place.  Then, more ironing.  After that, it's picture time. 

Normally the process is finished in April since I work on the aprons in between custom orders and more show squid.  Usually there's one apron I get attached to during this time.  This one below is so close to not being for sale but, I can't keep them all so I offer them up and hope they go to a good home. 

Squid in Homes

Sometimes I get awesome photos from customers on how they display their squid.  This is from a lovely lady in the Midwest. I am impressed with this mighty vine. 

I have a few more of these to do (and an entire file of fantastic ones of my squids out in the world, including crossing famous bodies of water) but if you have any photos of your squid or Tadly (or anything else I make) that you would like to send me please do!  I love seeing where my work ends up.  Email them to me at cleodees (at) gmail (dot) com or tag Cleo Dee on your photos for Facebook.  You can head there now to see some great examples, including one of my favorites.

Apron Progression

I've been collecting and working on new aprons very slowly in between other squid work since December but 2 days ago I started to wrap things up.

Still sewing spoons and tentacles.  Waiting to sew pockets back on.

 

 

This morning.

 

And here are a few of my favorites.  You can see most of the finished aprons here.  

Handmade Arcade is tomorrow, April 16th!

Hey Folks,

Remember to stop on by the David H. Lawrence Center in downtown Pittsburgh tomorrow for Handmade Arcade from 11am-7pm.  We are table 30 (in the back corner to the left of the food) with oodles of fun new designs surrounded by tons of super awesome vendors.  Here's a look at another new design that will debut tomorrow:

A new Abigail!

Hope to see you there!

Magnetism

More new things for Saturday!

squid magnets

Welcome!

Well I've spent almost 6 years on the livejournal but it was finally time for a change.  This new area will be similar to the old but I promise to keep up on it more in a very spiffy way. You can believe me because I've already typed repeating reminders into my phone.

Dude, I am serious.    

So hey, welcome and I hope you stick around.  If you do you'll get lots of this:

spears!

And this:

WHY?!

Oh, and of course you will get this, possibly more than you could want but I highly doubt you could ever get enough:

Serious.