Surprise dress!

Wha? Surprise dress? Yep, I'm having a Surprise banded pillowcase dress sale. $15 for a SURPRISE dress! What is a banded pillowcase dress you say? I'm attaching pics so you can check 'em out. They are one of my most popular basic dresses and normally retail for $22. If you are dying for a dress but your little one could possible shriek in horror if you try to put the color orange on her, you can can give me a little something to go off of. "We LOVE pink!" or "For the love of all that is holy, please no orange" but no fabric choices, this is a surprise after all. :) Head on over to my Facebook fan page and make sure you comment with your email address and size. Any sizes over a 5T will be a pillowcase TOP, not a dress. All dresses will be finished and shipped out by the end of the month.  Go get yours! Sale ends Saturday.

Quicky Links

2 weeks without a blog post! This have been cray-zay over here, swimming in fabric AND trying to pack for an upcoming family trip to Disney World (woop woop!).  Anyhoo - I wanted to get on here quick and give you a quick little list of some of my favorite links. Enjoy!

Nice Girl Notes - get your laugh on
Hawthorne Threads
My Gourmet Connection - can someone make these cupcakes for me please? ;)
Modish BIZ Tips
Craft Gawker
Totsy (I've found crazy good deals here! SO FUN!)

Flickr - FraybabyBibsandMore

fraybabybibsandmore's photostream on Flickr.

Just wanted to pass along my flickr photostream. I try to keep it fairly updated.

How do I do what I do

"I want to know how you do it?! Like, do you do assembly line, individual, etc. I have two kids too, love to sew, but would never have the time to keep them entertained and get work done. Are you up till all hours, etc."
"I want to know how you get it all done? Does the little one go to daycare/preschool? I'm amazed at how quickly you get things done and shipped out!"

Granola & milk: the newest hair trend

These are some of the questions that I get asked fairly regularly. How do I do it all? Well, for awhile I felt like I didn't. And even now I know that I still don't but have earned a "much improved." I loved the boom in business but it became a 24/7 kind of thing. I think most self employed people feel that way, especially at first, that your business consumes you and you become overworked, stressed and you realize you are neglecting everything else in your life. Clean house? What is that? Reading a book with little man? Oh crap, when was the last time I did that? Teach Destructo her ABCs? Uhhhhh.....Chick-fil-a for dinner anyone? In the beginning, there was chaos. And now, there's a lot more calm. 
My kiddos are age 5 (pre-K) and age 2 (no daycare or preschool, she hangs with her momma). 

A typical day for me is getting little man to pre-K and letting Destructo have rein of the house. I always have my sewing room in a central location (in our last house it was the dining room turned into sewing room/office and in this house it will be in a room right next to the downstairs den/play room.) so I can see and hear what is going on and so I can stop whenever I want or need.  Destructo has a great imagination and gets lost in her own little world so she actually is quite happy eating breakfast and then digging through the toy box, putting together puzzles and flipping through books while I work. In the morning I try to work at least 2 hours and then stop to clean, play, eat lunch and run errands. Nap time is around 1pm and while she naps, I work. I pick up little man from school around 3pm and the kids head out in the (fenced in) backyard to play and I sneak in 1 more hour to work. That is usually the last hour of the day that I sew and I stop to spend time with the family, get dinner ready, throw in some laundry or whatever else needs to be done. In the evening is usually when I get invoices sent, pictures posted, shipping labels printed and emails responded to since I can do all of that from the convenience of my laptop while I'm parked on the couch watching American Idol next to my hubby. When I am slammed with orders, I usually take an hour after the kids go to bed to prep for the next day - cut fabric, pin fabric, iron fabric, etc. I USED to be up all hours, working, working, working but after awhile I decided that I am more productive on a good night's sleep and I don't burn out as quickly when I am not working all day long.
Recap: work 8:30am to 10:30am, 1pm to 3pm and 3:30pm to 4:30pm. Invoice, email, ship and post pics in the evening. Sometimes work 8:30pm to 9:30pm. 
Do I assembly line work? Well, when 95% of your business is custom order you can't assembly line in the traditional sense of the word (making multiples of the same item) but I can streamline the process. I can cut out the fabric for all the pillowcase dresses, all the banded pillowcase dresses and all the fit and flair dresses at the same time and prep them the same way (finishing the edges, ironing, making bias tape for armholes), I can cut out all ruffles for all orders at the same time and take a chunk of time finishing their edged, ironing them and gathering them. When I get an order for a snack bag, I don't just cut out 1 bag, I cut out at least 3. I try to always make extra items so I get a nice stock of items for local customers to look at or for a ready to ship sale.
I've been doing this for awhile now so I have a good sense of how quickly I can get things done. I take a break when I need to and communicate with my customers as often as I can so everyone feels like they are in the know. I am easily accessible and I'm pretty normal which is a huge plus (don't underestimate the importance of normalcy, being friendly and just downright decent). ;) 
Not all days go so smooth. Sometimes I'm on a time crunch, sometimes I have a bunch of rush orders that come in and sometimes I just don't feel like sewing and I stay away from the sewing machine for a day or so. I have to stop and re-prioritize every once in awhile and make sure my house gets cleaned and the Mt. Vesuvios of laundry actually gets put away. When I start to feel like my sewing is taking away time from my kids I make sure I get on the floor and play with them, dance around to Ralph's World with them and read and extra book or two at bedtime to them. And every once in awhile my husband has to threaten to shred fabrics and vandalize machines for me to STOP.  But I'm sure it's like that for any crafter who loves their job. It is easy to get lost in it.

On the road (half way there)

Hangin' in the bed of a pickup truck. Yee-haw!!

Half way there! It's been a crazy past couple of days and NOT because of our move. For those of you who are following, we are in the middle of a move from Lubbock, Texas to Leavenworth, Kansas. Our packers arrived on Tuesday morning. We were exhausted after a long night of our youngest throwing up all night due to what we thought was food poisoning. The packers packed up our house all day long and returned the next day to finish up the job. I woke up Wednesday morning exhausted and by 3pm my son and I were victims of the worst stomach bug I have ever had. And guess who got it 6 hours later? My husband. And guess who was going to be at our house 8am Thursday morning? The movers to load the truck. We made it through the night (barely) and managed to get the house cleared out by Thursday evening. We checked into a local hotel and watched American Idol (what?!? James is out?!? outrage!) and I discovered that although our hotel had 102 other channels, they did not have carry ABC so I did not get to see Grey's Anatomy. On the upside we all passed out at 9:15pm and didn't move a muscle until 6:45am. 9 1/2 hours of sleepy time bliss. I can't remember the last time I've had that kind of sleep! :)
It took quite awhile to clean the house this morning before we cleared out. And the trip to Oklahoma City took about 7 hours with the pit stops along the way. But now we are settled in our hotel, flipping through the channels ("what kind of idiot puts CSPAN on channel 7? who would do that?", says my hubs), the kids are in bed and I am about to go kick the a/c unit because it is rattling and humming OUT OF CONTROL.
We are Kansas-bound tomorrow and I'm excited to check out our new locale! I'll keep everyone updated as to when our stuff shows up and when I get the sewing room up and loaded and am back open for business. I've had some great questions sent to me that I'll try to post answers to on this blog through out the weekend and early next week. Hope you are getting your lists ready because when I open back up, it's game ON and I can't wait! :)

Packing up and moving out

It's been a pack-a-thon over here. 4 ladies showed up to our house at 9am this morning and they have ROCKED it. They are the speediest packing crew we've ever had. In less than 7 hours they have packed up both the kids rooms, the bathroom, the family room, the kitchen, my insane sewing room and are starting on the master bedroom right now with 2 more hours left in their work day. Tomorrow they pack up all the bedding that we kept out to sleep on tonight, box up mattresses, do a quick pack of the laundry room and pack up the odds and ends in the garage. On Thursday the muscles of the operation arrive (well, I'm assuming that some big guns will show up. As impressive as these ladies are at packing at warp speed, somehow I don't see them slinging dressers over their head and carrying them out) to load up the moving truck on on Friday we clear out of our house. It's exciting!
I took some pics of the progress. I am liking the stark look of a boxed up house and wondering if Leavenworth will end up being the benefactor of a big Goodwill drop off.

Remember this?


It is now this:

AND, there are 6 more huge boxes in the family room that are marked as "MATERIAL", oh my. Hannah got in on the fun while Luke was at school and tried her hand at hauling around packing paper and boxes.

Wiped out

I've been cleaning since I woke up this morning. The movers arrive tomorrow morning to start packing us up and I'm in overdrive. Laundry, vacuum, pack suitcases, dust blinds and windowsills, start yet another Goodwill bag, clean bathrooms, more laundry AND....the sewing room. I've been packing up bows, sacking up scraps, gathering up pins, finishing up projects and clearing off surfaces. I think it's almost ready for the movers. The goal is for them to have some sort or order when they pack up the room so they aren't throwing ribbon in with spools of thread and pinned baby bibs and velcro. It went from this

to this

While I was working the kids were playing. I heard them running around, laughing and jumping on the beds. Luke found a calculator and started testing my mad math skills while I cleaned. I finished up some paperwork on my desk and we walked out of the sewing room to this -

if you thought cleaning was hard work, playing is harder. :)

Going back to my roots (bibs and more)

Way back when I first started sewing, I was making mostly baby items. It was around 2006/2007 when raw edge (frayed) items were in. I had a lot of requests for the frayed edge burp cloths and lovies and in 2008 when I decided to open an Etsy shop, those little frayed items ended up becoming a part of my shop name. (Sidenote: Do you know how hard it is to come up with a shop name? Now that I have been FrayBabyBibsandMore for over 3 years, I finally had a shop name pop into my head that I would love to use but can you really just rename your entire shop? Would there be an uprising? A protest? Would I be known as "you know, that girl who used to be FrayBaby".)
Moving on, NEXT SUNDAY, May 15th, Roo over at NiceGirlNotes is having a Cute Stuff Sale and I am a part of it. AND she asked me to focus on the baby stuff so I did and I've had so much fun going back to my roots and making batches of cute baby items. I will still have a dress or two in her sale but the majority of the items will be revamped baby goodies - handy dandy diaper pouches that clip onto bags or strollers, grab and go sets and matching bib/snack bag sets!

Check out the official post with the shop list (100 items for sale! Eeeee!) so you can check out ALL the goodies and be ready at 8pm EST on Friday because when it's on, it's ON.