More New Products!

Yesterday I received a query from an Etsy user about making my plushies into bookends. (Sweet idea.)

Now, think about that. How awesome would it be to have a chi-square holding up your books! I had to agree with her, this would be wonderful. So, last night my husband and I brainstormed and went shopping (he's so good about that!). We bought some aquarium gravel and shelf liner.


Why? Starting with the gravel...I made a small pouch of about 1 lb. of gravel. I plan to stick that inside of the plushie so it has some weight. The shelf liner is the stickiest one we found. I plan to use that to line the bottom of the plushie so she doesn't just slide down the shelf with the books following her.


As long as I sew the shelf liner between two layers of fabric, it works great.

I did some testing, and was pleased with the results. Now, the books I used are pretty small, so that might call fro a retest, and the shelf I used is just sanded wood, not even finished, so it has more grip on its own. But, even with a little bit of lean, the 1 lb pouch alone still held up the books. I placed it in a variety of positions and all were successful.


This was reassuring! Sadly, I will not have time to work some more on this until Monday night, but I look forward to it!

Testing A New Product?

My Etsy shop and homework have been in a lull lately. But I have good reason! I can't share it yet, but on Monday I will. You'll just have to trust me for now. :)

But, I did whip up this super-cute zipper pouch on Sunday night. The pattern is from Indie House. I did make some small changes, and I plan to make more. But the pattern was free and super simple to do!

Here is the completed pouch.


One change I made was to not have the raw edges exposed on the inside near the zipper, you can see that below. I also serged the corners (and should have surged the other open seam you can see below too).


The problem is, now what do I do with it? It's an odd size. About as tall as my lip balm.

I could use it for holding an apple? That fits pretty well, but I didn't use any padding, so it would roll around and likely get bruised.


It also fits snacks quite well. Now that I have a baby growing inside of me, I usually have a variety of snacks on hand to feed my hunger.


So, besides it not having a purpose yet, I really like my little pouch! I plan to add a handle to one and an tab to the other and make it a more pencil-y size. Also, I'll embroider some witty statistical/mathematical design on to it. But for now, I just have some cuteness.