There's some cool stuff at "clothes by the pound"

If you have a "clothes by the pound" store near you and want to practice sewing, go there! In about twenty minutes, I found these two great pieces that were in pretty rough shape, but didn't have any stains or holes in the body of the fabric (this is important - things with popped seams, ragged hems, ripped sleeves are all good candidates for fixing, things with big mystery stains and holes in the center of a panel are not). With a couple hours of work, I have some awesome new dresses that I would have struggled to put together from scratch. I wouldn't normally post about "fixing" clothes, but I also thought these dresses were really awesome designs.

Oh god, I made a store.

Alright folks! Here it is!
Ambrodust Clothing and Accessories

I would love it if you checked out my shop. Any comments, criticisms, tips, etc. are definitely welcome!


A lot of people have been telling me to sell the stuff I make. Well you've got your wish! I've finally come to terms with the risks and created a little Etsy shop of my own. I spent the past couple months making items to list, and it's still not much, but it's definitely a start. I'm pretty fond of everything for sale at this point, and would/do use pretty much the same items myself.

I'm not sure how to price items. I've tried to aim somewhere mid-range for the types of items I'm selling. Hopefully that's about right. I don't want to make it look like I don't value what I do, but at the same time, I'm worried things won't sell if I price too high (especially considering I'm a new seller).

The most difficult pricing is probably shipping. How does anyone know how much shipping will cost? Unless I bring every item down to the post office in the packaging I will use to ship it, I don't know. I've aimed low on this, but consider that a cost I'll suck up if necessary to give an incentive for people to buy items until the shop gets going (*hope*hope). I'll still be making a profit at this point on any item that sells, after subtracting item materials, labor/time (on the low end of hourly wage unfortunately), and gas/shipping materials. Perhaps I sew too slow? It seems like things would cost way, way too much if I charged the seemingly typical seamstress rate of $20 + per hour.


Now for a little not-all-that-interesting story time. I am soooo bad with names. I could never come up with a brand/shop/whatever name. My boyfriend came up with this, and well, I'm considering it a business decision. It's nondescript enough to give me flexibility with what items I can sell, hasn't been used by someone else for anything as far as I can tell, and has a little bit of a whimsical quality what with the dust and amber? ambrosia? yea... that's not what my boyfriend was talking about at the time... but hooray for coming up with explanations for why something is after the fact!

She's here! and a whole lot of fabric is too

There's been a lot going on lately, giving me little time to post, but Monday of this week deserves a mention.
First of all, my dress form finally came! She still needs a name; I'm a little stumped. My friends have made some good suggestions, but none of them feel quite right. Here she is in her natural habitat:

I think there's someone in my room every time I walk in... wonder how long it's going to take for me to get used to that.
Draping my Victorian costume skirt is a lot easier with the form, though the bodice does not fit her at all because of my sway back, even with the size set to the smallest one (which is around 3 inches smaller than me).

That same day, I went fabric shopping and came home with something like 35 yards of these awesome fabrics! I'm hoping to use some of them to make items for sale, most likely skirts and bloomers/lounge shorts. Like I mentioned in a previous post, I know the market for these items is pretty saturated but eh, might as well give it a try, that is, if I find the time to.

Oh thrift shopping, how I love thee.

I really want to take a moment for a short post about my most recent thrift shopping trip. I've scored some great stuff in the past (two pairs of platform sneakers and UFO pants within an hour in one store, on a half off sale day? One of my best shopping days ever.), and yesterday's haul is pretty sweet. To keep this somewhat sewing related...

check out all that bias tape! If I recall correctly, there's 13 packages there, with only 4 or so that have been opened - all for $3! On my way to the CD section after grabbing up that bias tape I noticed the modern cookie press ($8, a little pricey compared to my usual finds but it looks well made) then turn around and find the vintage one from the 1950s for only $4! It even has the instruction book! Check out the animal shaped disc for it, isn't that awesome?

I also got a new wallet, beads, tights, and some CDs (it's weird I didn't already own DJ Sammy's Heaven... It's one of the things that got me into electronic music in the first place, and still one of my favorite CD cover/insert designs. The other one is 97 Octane by Dieselboy. I'm not much of a fan, but it caught my eye the last couple times I saw it at this store so I went for it).

I can't praise thrift shopping enough. You never know what great things you'll find.

New fabric, and some other exciting thoughts

Today, I wanted to share my latest fabric acquisitions. The heart fabric especially drew me in, so cute! I might go back for more to make a couple skirts for sale (if the store still has it).

These both came from one of my favorite fabric stores, where everything is $1.99 a yard. They always seem to have something super cute or useful and just because all the fabric there is cheap doesn't mean it's poor quality. It's the same quality of fabric you'd find anywhere else, sometimes with factory errors or already cut into odd sized pieces, but often times no issues at all. The downfall is that the stock is not constant - see something amazing today? It probably won't be there the next time you go. I've gotten awesome fabrics in the past then wished later that I had bought twice as much, only to never see them sold again (the one I used for the yellow polka dot skirt is a perfect example of this).

They had several other fabrics I loved, though I'm trying not to buy more than I can store (it's becoming a problem...). This leads to the other thoughts I mentioned: I'm feeling particularly adventurous right now and considering pulling some money together to purchase some of the other fabrics I saw, then making some skirts in several styles/sizes to sell. It's risky, I don't know if anyone will buy my products because the market is pretty saturated with the skirt styles I like (well and there's that storage issue), but perhaps worth a shot. I'll see how I feel about the idea in a couple days, though I welcome any thoughts from you in the mean time.
Like I mentioned before, a dress form would really help in this sort of endeavor, so I caved and just ordered one.
I think I've fallen into the "retail therapy" trap this week, having spent money on patterns, millinery supplies, fabric, and now a dress form. I can just call these business expenses, right? Let's hope that's how this ends up.
Speaking of millinery supplies, I am expecting some in the mail soon to make a hat to go with my Victorian costume. It won't be exactly like the one pictured but similar. I purchased this pattern from Truly Victorian since I've never made a structured hat before. Lots of things to look forward to in the mail!

Victorian project - update 2

I went shopping last week to find trim for the polka dot mermaid dress but was unsuccessful. That shopping trip didn't go very well overall - I got some bias tape for the Victorian costume, but nothing else from my list. ugh. So, I'm still stuck on the dress.
On the plus side, I made some progress on the Victorian costume last week. Except, well, the cuffs are done but sticking out oddly. I thought it was just a matter of pressing them but that didn't help. I'm not really willing to re-do them... maybe I will though. You can kind of see what I mean in these photos if you look closely.

To buy or not to buy...

Yesterday, I started thinking of some things I should probably buy soon. The biggest of these things is a dress form. I've never really wanted a dress form before because after working with the ones at the costume shop, I know my proportions don't match them very well (though, they don't match anyone very well do they?). Maybe it wouldn't really help me fit dresses and blouses, and definitely not pants, but it should help with skirts. Cutting circle skirt hems has always annoyed me because I can't keep them even. Being able to throw the skirt on a dress form would let me mark the hem with the bias stretched naturally, in theory getting a more even hem. Draping the overskirt for my Victorian costume would also be much easier. I could use it for photos of finished projects with less hassle than trying to take photos of myself. It could help with fitting and photographing commissions as well.
But...where would I put this thing? I'd need it to be accessible pretty much on a daily basis or there's no point of owning it, and I don't really have free space in my bedroom/sewing room. I guess I could move a box or two of fabric down to the basement to make space.
Probably the biggest issue - dress forms are expensive. The cheaper ones are $100 to $150. I don't really need anything more than a cheap adjustable form, but being unemployed, that's costly enough to make me hesitate. A little more and I could get a nice point-and-shoot camera instead. Though if I got some commissions that I needed it for, it would pay for itself pretty quickly.

Any thoughts anyone? Should I just go for it?

The other things I've been looking at are some patterns from Truly Victorian. I do need to make a hat to go along with my Victorian costume and I like one of the hat patterns they have. Of course then I'd need buckram and millinery wire too. If I ordered the hat pattern I might as well get a corset pattern at the same time, since I've wanted to make a corset for a while and have seen a lot of praise for theirs. I've never paid this much for patterns before, but it's not too bad, having to get the materials will be worse. I probably will go ahead and buy these sometime soon so I can make a hat in time for May 19th.