Embroidered Portrait - The Yethouse, Newcastleton

Last summer we went on holiday to the Scottish Borders and stayed in a gorgeous farmhouse called The Yethouse.  Owned by a lovely lady called Barbara who lives next door it had the best standard of accommodation and furnishings we have experienced in a long, long time.  

Remotely set but within walking distance of the village, the house is right next to the Seven Stanes mountain bike trails and also a Rock UK centre offering a wide range of outdoor activities for all members of the family.


On returning from our lovely holiday, I completed a commissioned picture of the photo above and this was the result:

Barbara's was delighted with the picture and it is now hanging in the Yethouse for visitors to see.

If you are interested in commissioning a portrait of your home, favourite building or landmark, please contact me at sue@rubypatch.co.uk .

Embroidered Notebooks - Lots of stuff posted very late!

Once again I have been guilty of neglecting my blog.  

No excuses, straight onto news!

In the last few months I have been changing my products, introducing new ones and removing some old ones.  Over the last year it has become obvious that my most popular ranges are the notebooks and framed pictures.

I have therefore been concentrating on these and phasing out some of the less popular (and smaller) items.  

Here's a little collage of my most recent notebooks.  I'll post more about them and in more detail later.

Many of my notebook designs are bespoke.  They allow me to product new original designs and this keeps me interested and also gives me the patience to produce my standard lines (gardening, recipes, sewing and travel) without getting too bored!

You can find my notebooks and artwork for sale via my Etsy shop , my website or on Make the Most of. 

Alternatively, if you would like to discuss a bespoke design or would just like to order direct, please email me at sue@rubypatch.co.uk  

New Textile Art Pictures - Tobermory and Saltburn Pier

Since my last post, I have been concentrating on producing embroidered landscapes.  After a holiday in the Lakes and Scotland, I was inspired by the fantastic scenery and my first picture, on my return, was the harbour at Tobermory on the Isle of Mull.  For those with kids, you will recognise it as Balamory!

This one was fun to do but the windows took ages.  I thought the reflections worked well and will use this again.

After Tobermory I received a commission to do a view of Saltburn pier, Huntscliff and the funicular railway.

This was to remind the customer of happy days in childhood so the responsibility was huge.  

I have so many ideas for other scenes and I'm really looking forward to creating more.

Animal Brooches

This week I had some great news.  A fabulous shop in the Lake District has agreed to stock some of my brooches.  As I started to produce their order, I thought it would be a good idea to document the brooch making process for this blog.

The first step is to produce a pencil drawing to scale of the design. The owl is really a very simple outline.

Each piece of the design is then traced onto bondaweb.  This is basically tracing paper with a fine layer of adhesive on one side.  

As you can see, the body of the owl is one piece, the eyes another and the beak a third.  The final piece (not shown here) is the feet.  The adhesive on the bondaweb is activated once the tracing paper has heat applied to it by ironing it onto the wrong side of the fabric that is to make up the design.

After selecting the fabric to be used for each element of the brooch, the bondaweb is ironed onto the wrong side.

The shapes are then carefully cut out to leave a pile of bits of owl!

The tracing paper is peeled away to leave the elements of the owl design which now have an adhesive layer on the back.  These are arranged on a thick canvas fabric and ironed into place, slowly building up the layers of the design.

Now is the best part.  Time to embroider.  

The embroidery is done on a sewing machine using a darning foot and with the feed dogs dropped.  I usually use black thread to make the design stand out.

Once the embroidery is complete, the brooches are cut out, backed with felt and have a brooch pin added.  The finished product is quite cute if I say so myself!

And here's the other design I have supplied to the shop.

North East Landmarks

This week I have been on holiday from the day job to spend time with the kids and to do a bit of sewing too.  As we have been out and about, I have been trying to look at views and landmarks from the perspective of whether I could produce a textile picture from them.

The first piece I did was a general amalgamation of a number of landmarks - the ones that I think make this area identifiable.  I produced a 12" x 10" picture which I have been extremely lucky to sell straight away.  It will be mounted this weekend and then posted to its new home in Stockton-on-Tees.

I am quite happy with how it turned out and will hopefully get some high quality photos before it is posted off so that I can get some greetings cards printed.

A few days ago, my youngest daughter and I went out for lunch at the coast and took this photo.

Although the light wasn't great I thought this was a great subject for a new picture. I finished this one yesterday and am quite pleased with the result.

This one has a lot less patterned material so that you can see the stitching. I also consciously used coordinating thread colours rather than my usual black and am pleased with the result.

Etsy Shops

Today I thought I'd do a post about Etsy.  Although I have known about it for some time,  those who are not crafters seem to be relatively unaware of it.  

I opened my shop, Ruby Patch, in August 2012 and have had between 5 and 15 items up for sale for most of that time.  To date I have had a total of 4 sales!  Not a great outcome for the period of time I have had the shop, but when you compare the cost of putting the items up for sale, the minimal effort it takes to do the admin and the subsequent income earned, I have had a good return.

I have spent approximately £10 in fees for £100 of sales which isn't too bad in my opinion.  If only I could get more sales though.  

I have therefore decided to invest some time and effort in my Etsy shop and will share my experiences with you in future posts. 

My first improvements were completed today and consisted of:

Designing an eyecatching banner 

Your shop's banner should catch customer's attention and make them want to see more.  Here is my original banner - a plain reflection of my logo and name.

Although it reflects most of my branding well, I have changed it as I felt it was leaving too much of the banner blank white. Here's my new banner.

I don't imagine that this will make too much of a difference, but it looks more balanced on the page.

Standardisation of Photography

Last month I did a lot of work re-photographing my products inside of a whitewashed wooden crate.  I uploaded these photos to my website but hadn't got round to doing this on Etsy.  

Photo of Travel Journal

Unfortunately, I then discovered that plain backgrounds are more likely to get your products included in treasuries as they will blend well with other people's products if all of the backgrounds are similar.

New photo of Travel Journal

Personally I like the first version, but am willing to try the plain approach to see if it affects sales.

Uploading More Products

I am adding a lot more products, the total is currently standing at 29, and intend to add even more.  As it only costs $0.20 to list an item, it seems silly not to have had everything on here from the start.  After all, people are never going to buy products that aren't being advertised as being for sale are they?

Joining Teams

As with most other selling platforms, Etsy has very active seller groups, called Teams.  I have joined a few and will try networking on here for a while to see if this has any effect. 

So that's been today's progress.  I will update on any other adjustments I make and also on the astronomical increase in sales as a result!!  :)  

      

Additional Notebook Designs

I thought it was about time I posted an update on what I've been getting up to lately.  After developing the range of notebooks I have posted about previously, I have been asked for a number of custom designs too.

At a craft fair recently, a lady asked me if I would design an A6 notebook cover so that she could record her grandson Tiaan's speech development.  As she provides child care for him, his parents were keen for her to keep a record of the new words and phrases he learned in their absence.  I thought this was a lovely idea and would make a great keepsake.  Here's the finished item.

I have also designed some customised A5 notebook covers for teacher's gifts.  My niece is leaving middle school this summer and wanted special gifts for her two teachers.  I was pleased with the results but they were completely unique to the individual and therefore some of the motifs will not make sense to people that don't know them.

Who knows what notebooks designs will be next.....  Well it is possible that one might be entitled 'Soapy Notes'.  My friend Deborah, who owns Peculiar People soap and beauty products wants a notebook to reflect the soap making process.  That will definitely be a challenge!