More Knit Natters Pictures from Saturday

Barbara makes porcelain dolls, and the pouring, firing, painting, ad dressing are quite a process.  Some of Barbara's porcelain dolls, at various stages of completion, are shown here.  

First of all, the tiny baby shown on the yellow wash cloth is about 5" long, entirely porcelain and not yet dressed.  

The big doll is maybe 28".  Barbara made a soft body for him, and he's not dressed yet.

The miniature, dressed doll (my favorite, of  course, because it's finished) fits in the palm of my hand!  Barbara says she took an entire week to make all those tiny little clothes.

Sylvia's church is making patchwork lap robes for a service project, and she brought along some samples.  They are using cotton calico cut in 10" squares with 1/2" seams, so these 4 by 4 lap robes turn out 36" in size.  They're having a work day with the sewers sewing and the non-sewers cutting.  It's no surprise to me that the cutting takes longer than the sewing!

Here's another nifty thing Pat Tittizer is making.  These are washcloths, but they're shaped more like scrubbies and are made from dishcloth cotton.

Pat gave us samples to take home.  Maybe I can create an MK version...on the bulky, of course, and folding and sewing directions will be necessary.

Mildred had brought along a crocheted doily made from plastic tablecloth scraps!  It was terrific.  Mildred, Pat and Sara have knitted and woven with plastic bags before, but we loved the bright colors from the tablecloth.  I somehow didn't get a picture.  Okay, okay, I'll tell the truth - I'm not very good about remembering to take pictures.  I get too fascinated with what everyone is making, I guess.  My plan was to get little Tiffany (Barbara's little granddaughter, who lives with her, and is sharp as a tack) to take the pictures, but she was off with family.  At some point in the meeting, I started snapping pictures and got most of the other things.

I demonstrated the wavy lace stitch that is over at Trico a Maquina.  I'm putting the pattern up in a blog post, so I won't cover that here.

Barbara treated us to another pleat lesson for Passap - but this time, she went over the changes in terminology necessary to create those pleats on the Japanese macines!  I love Barbara's demos.

We had a very interesting discussion about what items sell at the craft consignment store.  Pat works there and says baby things do pretty well, and of course, small gift items with low prices.  Sylvia, who has a professional embroidery machine, has made various things for sale but is rather baffled at what might sell.  She's talking about bringing a box of her things and asking everyone for opinions and suggestions.

I admitted that I am terrible at picking out items that will sell.  I learned that the hard way when I had my shop years ago, but fortunately, my employee Gail was great at picking winners.  She chose a lot of "cute" things, or humorous things, or sports-oriented things.  And you know what?  In eight years of owning that shop, I never did develop much skill at choosing big-selling items, although my sweater patterns were quite popular.

Pat pointed out that the colors that sell aren't necessarily our individual favorite colors.  She has developed a sense of what colors sell.