Millions of T-shirts!!

My house currently holds at least 13 sets of T-shirts! I cannot believe how quickly our trickle of orders has turned into a river of demand!

Jan (my mom) & I have already completed 5 quilts since 2011 began, and we're booked solid through the Summer at least. Not a week goes by that we don't have a phone call or email about making a T-shirt quilt! Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

A lot has happened since I blogged last (oops)... I (Julie) have since changed jobs. I was a commercial insurance advocate for 5 years on the dot, and was asked to interview at my church for an admin position. I started working as the admin assistant in the Children's ministry to the children's pastor & asst children's pastor on Jan 3rd. It is a perfect fit, and it has been such a great change of pace. The insurance world was very stressful & exhausting. Children's Ministry is busy, but it has so many FUN elements that I find myself energized by what I do. What an unexpected surprise! I had no idea that I was interested in working in ministry, but it is such a joy to work with amazing people of faith, and I am learning so much! The job is so much more than administrative work, and I love that!

This job change has allowed for more flexibility. Including FRIDAYS off!! Woo hoo! I love getting to work on Vinyl Art & T-shirt quilts on Fridays.

Mom & I are working on 3 quilts that are due by Easter for a customer in New Jersey. She has 3 children who will be home for Easter, and she can't wait to surprise them with the quilts in their Easter baskets!! We are working overtime to get those quilts to her in time! Please pray for us to be efficient with our time!

We have 3 or 4 graduation quilts in line as well, and then about 8-10 quilts that have no deadlines (thank goodness!). WHEW! What an honor to be trusted with well-loved memories & experiences that belong to people all over the country.

Thank you SO much for supporting us on our journey! The Lord has given us Fishtail Designs to really take something that we enjoy & use it to help pay down debt and be productive with our time.

When my hubby told me that he was being sent out of state to work for 3 months, I cried a little, thinking of the lonliness, but then reality set in...

• "I have to sleep in our house alone 5 nights a week?!?"
• "I'm going to clean out EVERY closet in our house!"
• "I get to watch old movies without Kevin complaining!"
• "Kevin can watch the Braves every night without me complaining!"
• etc...

Well, thanks to Netflix, I have watched probably a dozen classic movies the past 3 weeks. I have this list of movies that I feel like I'm supposed to see in order to call myself a classic movie fan... So I've watched Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, The Three Faces of Eve, A Streetcar Named Desire, All About Eve, & Summer Magic. I snuck in my favorite Doris Day movie called Move Over Darling. She is such a fun actress!

And I worked in some of the other films that aren't as old, but I've always wanted to see... Kramer vs Kramer, It Could Happen to You, & Peggy Sue Got Married.

I'm totally not watching these movies out of laziness. They're my "craft time" entertainment - when I'm sewing or cutting vinyl art jobs. My ultimate "me" time!

I'm nearly done with my first "mini-quilt." Its such a fun pattern & I'm excited about the fabrics that I put in it, but nervous about sending it to my partner for the mini-swap. I've seen her work & its fabulous! Little does she know that I'm making my very first traditional style quilt... Yikes! It is a lot of fun though, and I want to make another with the same pattern - it's called "windmill," but its not the traditional windmill pattern.

Here's what it's supposed to look like when its done: Windmill Mini Quilt... So I'll post photos soon :) 

On the T-shirt quilt end, we are kind of panicking because our top-quilter promised the top stitched & bound quilt YESTERDAY. It wouldn't be a huge deal, except we promised that the quilt would be sent to the gift recipient in time for the graduation party on SUNDAY. Today is Thursday... I just wish that we could afford a long-arm machine so that we wouldn't have to rely on others for the quilts that are under deadlines!

On a positive note we're starting one of our largest quilts right now. It's a compilation of concert T-shirts, including Dave Matthews Band, String Cheese Incident, Widespread Panic, & festivals such as Bonaroo. The best part about this quilt is that the owner plans to use it for sitting outside at concerts, so we're going to get a lot of publicity from those crowds!

My mom & I also have a connection to Yee-Haw Industries through our day job, and they take their fabulous products to Bonaroo every year. We're hoping to get a chance to show them this quilt & maybe get some networking going through them...

We're also setting up a table at the Miss Majorette of Tennessee pageant on June 5th. I'm launching a new line of Baton Twirler decals, so I'm hoping that we'll get some good exposure there. I have posted the first installment of the line on my Etsy page here: Baton Twirler Decal. I grew up looking for decals like this - and only finding cheerleaders or dancers. Baton twirlers have always been left out of the accessory market! ha!

By the way... I have cleaned out a single drawer in the house... haven't made it to the closets yet...

Orders keep rolling in!

I haven't written in a few days because I've been so busy cutting vinyl for new orders!!

We had our first mailbox lettering order this past week, and completed it last night. My Etsy customer picked one of my favorite fonts (#10), and the design will look so cute on the mailbox at her NEW home!

Then I logged in this morning to Etsy & was surprised to find another mailbox lettering order for both sides of a mailbox. Yay! She also picked font #10

Here's my mailbox, which my husband & I applied to our mailbox on the coldest day of the year. We were bored & cooped up, so we had fun with vinyl art!

Weekend Update

Good Monday morning! My hubby & I had a very productive weekend. We cleaned the entire house top to bottom by 11:30 am on Saturday - what a fantastic feeling! While I attacked the ironing mountain, the hubs did the March budget & made our bi-weekly grocery list & dinner menu (my least favorite thing in the world!).

I really enjoyed doing the ironing because I watched a couple of Turner Classic Movies that I've stored up on my DVR. Can you believe that I'd never seen Splendor in the Grass until this weekend?? Wow, what a fabulous movie. Natalie Wood, Warren Beaty... yum! I also watched the Cary Grant/Irene Dunn 1937 film The Awful Truth, which was a really cute romantic comedy, and I enjoyed watching a young Cary Grant.

After our grocery trip, I spent some time on my vinyl art font options, which was something I've been putting off. I increased my "signature" font options to 38 from 25, and I think the photo on my etsy listing is a bit more legible.

Here it is:

When I design vinyl art pieces, I try to picture what they will look like once my customer applies them to the wall. My imagination is not nearly as beautiful as the finished products turn out. Thank you to my Etsy clients for sending photos of the applied vinyl!!! It is so fun for me to see the big picture!

Mother / Daughter Crafting Duo

My mom & I started a T-Shirt Quilt business in June of 2008 after we made my own t-shirt quilt together.

We work side-by-side 40 hours a week in an insurance agency, but we still enjoyed having a creative outlet outside of the office. As we made my t-shirt quilt, we daydreamed about creating custom quilts for others, and eventually turning it into a business.

"Eventually" came along very quickly as people saw our first quilt, which was a patchwork of t-shirts from the past 15 years or so of my life. The quilt included middle school, high school, & college shirts. Even the smallest pieces of my t-shirt logos made it to the quilt, unlike many t-shirt quilts that we'd seen in the past.

Within a year, word of mouth spread quickly, and we made over 15 T-Shirt Quilts for friends, family, & friends of friends. We hired a graphic designer to design our logo after deciding upon a business name. Our business name, Fishtail Designs, comes from baton twirling lingo, as we wanted to market primarily toward baton twirlers (I am a former high school & collegiate majorette and currently coach baton). Our market has since expanded beyond baton twirling into a general market that continues to surprise us.

We joined Etsy in 2009 after so many friends encouraged us to check it out, and have since found a home where we feel so welcome as a creative duo. We have one Etsy shop together where we market the T-shirt Quilts, along with vinyl art & other crafts that we make.

Although we spend many hours a week together in a professional setting, we thoroughly enjoy a couple of evenings a week and some weekends sewing, creating, & spending quality mother/daughter time together. We have a great balance of skills in the business. We both contribute to the design of the quilts, the preparation of the materials, and the process of sewing the shirts together. My mom sews beautifully and has given me many tips so that I feel confident now to sew a straight line. I spend a lot of time marketing our T-shirt quilts on Facebook, Etsy, our Blog, and anywhere I can spread the word.

This business has also encouraged my husband & my dad to spend more one-on-one time together. They've become golfing buddies and can spend hours watch sports or hanging out with a cold drink by the grill!

It is such a joy to work with my mom, and our creativity together gives us hope for a future of full time T-Shirt quilting...

Surf's Up!

I had a fun order for vinyl art last week, and the buyer was kind enough to send a photo of the finished product.

The vinyl was ordered by a California mom who knew exactly what she wanted (my kind of customer!). She gave me color choices, font choices, sizes, and even a mock-up of how it should look.

Enjoy!

Finished Product

One of my fabulous Etsy customers emailed me a photo today of the vinyl that I sent to her. She created a twist on traditional vinyl art, and created a sign for her child's nursery with the vinyl. It looks beautiful!

If you're interested in vinyl art, please visit my listing for custom orders HERE, and we'll begin the process together!