Opening the mystery boxes

I’m so excited:  I’m finally going to peek inside the boxes that I picked up from Jim Thompson just before moving from Atlanta to Oberlin in 2012.  

First I had to haul them up from the basement where they've been stored for the past 4 years.  Hmm, some are a bit damp and slightly moldy.  Hope the fabric inside is ok.  There are fine little roots growing on the basement walls - I'll need to get Dominique to take a look at that.

Boxes in the basement

Next step, get them into the my studio.  I have no idea what’s in them.  Let’s see…

Boxes in studio with Sunny

Well, interestingly, many of the samples are additional colors of ones I already have, but there are several new ones, as well.  Plus a couple of boxes of silk scraps and 2 really big bags of more samples.  What a treasure trove.

The unveiling!

Counting them all took me about 10 hours; that doesn’t include the time to stock them.  What I do is keep one sample of each color of each fabric on my shelves upstairs; the rest go on my shelves in the basement. 

My mystery boxes added about 3,000 pieces to my stash – time to get busy!

New fabrics, sort and counted - all 3,000 pieces

A day in the life...

Today started with a trip to Cleveland to buy 3 spools of embroidery thread and 2 light bulbs for my photography lights.  Got all the embroidery threaded and launched the 30 patches I need to do - they look great!  Threads are breaking from time to time but overall things are going pretty smoothly.

While babysitting the embroidery machine I am finally able to start focusing on the set-up of my work room.  Dom helped me put up one of my Elfa shelves and I think I know how I want to organize my fabrics:  I'm going to dedicate a shelf to each product, with cut pieces - bodies, flaps, straps - and finished products.  That will help me to see how much raw material I have for each product and when I need to start processing more.  Plus I'll be more prepared when I get a wholesale order.

Need to finish the process of matching bodies to flaps to straps for products other than sandwich bags.  Then I need to store the material I don't need for the time being so it's not taking up a lot of space in the workroom.  Plus I have to get my photography area set up; I have quite a few products to shoot and list.

And I haven't even started on the administrative/marketing/financial tasks I should be taking care of...But it's nearly midnight, so I'll save that for another day.

Cutting

So tedious, cutting fabrics.  How did I ever accumulate so many?  My feet hurt from standing on the concrete floor.