December 2015

There aren’t too many days left before Christmas, so I’m thinking that whatever gifts we still have time to make need to be some nice, but quick and easy gifts to make.

The first idea that comes to mind are washcloth slippers – you’ve probably seen them on our PatternsThatFitYou site, as well as our Patterns2Go site.

Free Washcloth Slippers Pattern

Either place you want to visit, the pattern instructions are FREE, easy to follow and very quick to make. The washcloth slippers are a super gift to give to those in nursing homes, in hospitals as well as anybody else on your gift list.

The second idea for a cute gift is the “anything goes” quilt. This pattern is also free and available from Patterns2Go.

Super Easy Anything Goes Quilt Pattern

The idea here is to use a length of fabric according to the quilt size you want to make – the fabric should have some designs on it, as shown above, but not be “too busy” with designs. You will sew the fabric to a backing, put quilt batting on the inside, then do your quilt stitching either around the designs, if they are large enough, or do hand quilting stitches around all or part of the designs to complete the quilt. This type of quilt is great for children’s quilts or for little girls for doll quilts. If you have the right type of decorative fabric, this also works very well as a wall hanging to make as a gift.

For additional gift ideas you can check out the patterns at SewWithSarah.com.

Do any of you have any other ideas for quick and easy gift ideas???? I’m thinking that a lot of us who really like to make Christmas gifts are getting to where “quick and easy” would sound really good!

Are your Holiday sales as high as you’d like them to be? Are you making sales at all, or are you getting only a few customers per week?

The advantage of working out of our homes is that we don’t have rent to pay on a store building, or spend our days at the store pacing the floor wishing someone would walk through the door.

Some days it’s very hard to keep an optimistic point of view when it appears that we don’t know when the next dollar will come in.

Even though the economy is taking a hit on all of us, we begin think we are all alone, and start wondering if our work is good enough or perhaps customers no longer like what we make, etc.

A good case in point is something that just happened in our town. Last weekend our town held an annual 3 day event and one of the biggest festivals in the entire area. This festival has been going on for years and gets bigger each year. According to the paper there were over 200 vendors (artists) coming from all across the country to attend the festival and over 150,000 people expected to attend. I’m sure the artists all thought they were gonna go home afterwards with wads of dollars from sales!

After the festival ended, the newspaper interviewed several of the vendors/artists to get some feedback on how it went. First of all, they didn’t get anywhere NEAR the crowd that they were expecting, and those who did attend were “lookers” and not “buyers”. One artist who had come from another state said she sold ONE painting on Friday, NONE on Saturday and TWO on Sunday. She had paintings that ranged from $200 to $2,000 — and the three that were bought were all in the $200 range. Were her paintings poor quality? Were the paintings something that nobody would want? Absolutely not!!! They were beautiful! One would-be customer came up and wanted the $2,000 painting so badly, but said she just didn’t have the money right now, but would “take a business card” and get hold of her (the artist) later. The artist said “later never comes”!

Now I would have to say that this particular artist, as well as probably the majority of the rest of them, COULD begin to go into a “low self esteem” slump just wondering why their stuff didn’t sell like it did last year or the year before. Perhaps even start to think they need to get out of this business.

Now is the time for an ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT! Yes, the economy stinks, and people are hanging on to every dollar they can. However, there IS something that you can do, especially if your self esteem is ready to hit rock bottom.

Consider this: we all have the same 24 hours each day. We all wake up with the same day ahead of us. What we decide to do with those hours is up to us individually, not up to the weather, not up to the stock market reports or up to how many sales we made yesterday. Today is a NEW day, and we need to determine within our own heart that we WILL do something that will make a difference.

If customers are not coming to you, perhaps you could go to them. I’m sure there are many shut-ins that would appreciate someone coming to them to get their measurements, or to pick up their alterations that need to be done. If you are making craft items, perhaps you could consign them to a local fabric store where people traffic would be greater than to your home. Consider what it is that you’re doing and spend a little time thinking about what you could do to add more customers, or get the word out a little more about what you have. Perhaps you could make a little gift basket of items that you deal with and talk to some local stores about doing a Holiday Raffle — you can get raffle tickets easily, cover an empty peanut butter jar or something similar and make a nice decorative “holiday raffle — $1.00 per ticket” sign.

If you have other ideas, please let us know so we can pass them along to our readers.

Archives for December 2015

Quick And Easy Gift Ideas

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