Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Day 2 in the Sewing Studio- not a lot of progress, we started to cut/sew

Today, we decided to get a move on all of our custom orders. We cut a ton of wool, sewed a little and did some tiny improvements. We brought the microwave in, got some snacks and started our little food shelf. We bought a mini-fridge off of craigslist and need to spend some time cleaning it up. We brought some toys and started that shelf (Bonnys son will be with us most everyday and my kids will eventually be there as well). Otherwise, most of the day was spent working. :) Now I am up to date on the blog! I am going to post daily updates for everyone as we get this place in order. I think because we wont be taking a long break from customs, we are going to continue to sew, sew, sew and take customs as they come it may be a long process. It has been so so much fun for me so far, so I hope its fun for everyone to watch. And if you live in San Diego or are visiting the San Diego area, please email us and stop by the studio. We would love to see you!!! We want some guests!

Tomorrow plan & goals:
- Finish cutting customs/wool.
-Sew up as many customs as possible.
-Put away woven fabrics.
-Clean up mini-fridge, get it set up.

Pics from today...


First item sewn in the new studio. :)

Me, sewing for the first time in the studio. :)


Still a mess. LOL And now we are making messes too! ;) Customs cut on shelf, ready to sew.

Cutting table, with wool ready to be cut. :)

Stay tuned tomorrow...

Day 1 in the RW Sewing Studio- Unpacking...

Our first day in the studio was spent unpacking fabrics & getting furniture in order. I am going to purchase another desk to go on the other side of Edwards poster (yes, we are major twilight/team edward fans). That is going to be where my printer is, my laptop during the day (Im taking it home at night) and the 2 sewing machines are. My long grey table will hold 2 sergers & a coverstitch machine. :) We got the majority of the fabric in the cubes, but as you can see there is still room which means there is more fabric to cram in!!!

The brown shelf has all of our Hard to Find/Popular fabrics on it, and than we will be folding the small scraps (and there is a whole huge bucket full of more small scraps) that will go on the bottom shelves. The white shelf is holding our thread, and than on the bottom will be all of our woven fabrics (I hope it all fits). We also have a table that is designated for our snap press now (we have had this table for a while but we used it differentely, and with more room and things moved around it an be designated for the snap press! Excited about this! Ok, enough explaining, here are the pics...

We decided to bring a table outside, and eat our lunch looking at the gorgeous view on Day 1. :)

Our lunch table, and the view...


Sewing table starting to look about right.

A start to fabrics being put away, and thread on the shelf. :)


Fabric, in a rainbow! :)

This is our scrap shelf. Bottom is solid knit scraps, the next 2 up are wool scraps separated by color. Than we have unfinished projects and the top shelf is finished custom pieces.

Look for Day 2...


Studio Moving Day- Saturday Feb. 5, 2011

So since the studio was painted early (and we had set aside Sat. for painting) we decided to MOVE early on Saturday. It took 3 trips back and forth and 2 cars. We did only have my tiny Prius for the first trip, but I recruited my sister with her SUV to help us with the last 2 trips. I have no idea how I fit all this stuff into my bedroom, it took some serious organization! It feels so nice to have so much room now. So here it all is in all its messy glory. The only thing we did Saturday night is set up the cubes for fabric storage. We plan to put up some sort of curtain to cover the fabric (or maybe we will just love looking at all the fabrics and keep it the way it is). Opinions please...

We started moving at 11am (and woke up at 9am mind you after going to sleep past 3am the night before, we were just THAT excited) and finished around 10pm, we went to dinner at the restaurant my sister works at, and than headed home for some R&R. Sunday, we took off to spend time with our families and super bowl of course!!! It was hard to leave behind all my wonderful things & my business, it definitely has become my baby! :)

Pics of the move:


Bonny in her new cutting space. :)

The cubes all put together (for fabric storage).

Most furniture in its final place, but boxes all around it, looking crazy...

The cutting table & filing cabinet (which is full of patterns & receipts, etc) in its final place.

Me, tired but so excited. The move is over, we did it!!!

I dont have anything to say about this pic. LOL


Complete & Utter Moving Chaos. This actually was the first picture before things started getting put in their place.

Thanks for reading. Onto Day 1! :)

Studio Painting Day- Friday 2-4-2011

Title says it all. :) We are ahead of schedule on the studio! :) We planned to start the process on Monday, Feb 7th. But we decided to get started a little early! Friday Night, we started painting around 6pm and painted until almost 3am!!! We got the whole place done, it just needs a few touch ups. We are thrilled with the color. We debated on the main color of the studio for around an hour in home depot and we both finally decided on going with this color, and we love it!! We originally thought we would go with something earthy (maybe an avocado green on some walls & medium brown on others) but than we decided that the blue was a calm serene color but it was also fun & exciting! It was quite a job painting the studio and we were so sore from up/down the ladder every 3 mins and you would never think but holding paint brushes & rollers for 8 hours is labor intensive! It was fun though...

We decided to build our whole bathroom around the Joel Dewberry Almond Aviary Fabric. We did a deep orange on the bottom half of the wall and a tan khaki color for the top half. We plan to embellish some hand towels with the fabric, even frame some of the fabric and do various other things to make it an Almond Aviary bathroom! We are excited about this, it is sort of a gutsy move painting half the walls in orange but we think we can pull it off. We also are going to put a dark cherry wood trim to divide the colors up.

Here are photos of painting day:
(they seem to be out of order)

The painting is done!!

We are done & cleaning up.

View from the ladder into the bathoom (which isnt quite done yet).


Bonny putting the electric plug fronts back on. :)

The last edging is done!

Almost done, aside from edging.

First brush of paint on the wall!

The colors we chose for our studio!

Thanks for reading! Now to post more photos of moving day!! Watch our blog as we move in, get started & perfect the look of the studio!

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Rainbow Waters New Studio

So, I know its been a long time since I have used this blog. I found facebook for my business and I found updating from there easier. But, this post seems worthy of a blog entry and so therefore I am revisiting the blog today!

So when Rainbow Waters began, it started in my living room with a tiny wooden shelf, on top of it a sewing/embroidery machine and beneath it lay a few yards of fabric. We moved a few times, and we grew. Eventually, I decided my business would be better off in my bedroom so that the mess wasn't in my living room when people walked into my house. Slowly, in order to make room for the business I started getting rid of personal furniture to make room for business furniture. And this worked for a long time. I had 6 machines, a large cutting table, thousands of yards of fabric and much much more. :) In mid-2009, I hired my friend Bonny to help me with a co op and liked her help so I decided to ask her to help me full time. She said yes! :) Bonny helped me to organize my business, use the little space I had better and she cut all fabric. She has been amazing!! Anyways, why this long sappy post over a sewing studio? Well, for a long time, Bonny and I would search craigslist for offices, studios & store fronts, dreaming that one day we would have one. We would dream of how we would decorate, where the machines would go, the space we could have for the kids to play. We never thought that dream would come true so soon!

One day, I was randomly searching craigslist again, and I came across this studio that was on someones property, gorgeous views, hardwood floors and the price was really right! Something I thought I could pay if we really budgeted the business. I decided to email him on a whim, it was a long shot this place was still available since this price was way too good in San Diego to last. It was! We decided to look at it, we still were not sure if we would apply, everything was happening so fast. We were still nervous about the logistics and if we could make it work not sewing from home. We saw it and we fell in love! We HAD to make this work. He had other offers, so things had to work out just right for us to get the place. Well, we got it! :) So with that, I am going to end this blog post, and we will be doing blog posts of our progress of painting, moving in & setting up the studio. And at some point, I will post some before pics of all the years of Rainbow Waters in the home. :)

We are so so excited!
Lindsay

Friday, February 5, 2010

Fun with appliqued tees!

Here are some customs we've done recently - tees and appliques! It has been so fun creating these, thinking of ideas, and hearing all the fun feedback on them!








As always, we love to hear your ideas for customs! Thanks!

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Rainbow Waters Update!

We have been MIA from the blog again, but we are back and with more fun photos of customs and news updates! A few things are changing with our price lists and we want to keep you up to date! Due to rising costs of wool, we decided to take a second look and reevaluate our materials verses labor costs. All of this has led to a slight increase on our wool prices, $2 more for each size, that we have found necessary in order to continue selling wool products. We hope you will understand. However, our new prices will not go into effect until February 1, 2010. Any orders that are paid for before this date will be charged the old wool prices.

Here are the prices as they will be posted on February 1st, 2010:




We will do our best to take as many orders as possible before February 1st for those of you who would like to purchase some last minute wool at the the old price. But, please keep in mind that the turn-around time may go up depending on the volume of response. We will give you an accurate estimated completion time at the time of your order. Please feel free to purchase a slot or email me to put in an order - I will accept as many email orders as I can at this time.

We have also reevaluated our applique prices and have decided to do more of a sliding scale system based on the complexity of the applique. These prices will also not go into effect until February 1, 2010. I may put some sort of gallery on the site with examples of the different appliques and the price that particular applique would be. Until that is complete, please email for a quote.

All right, business over - now for customs! Here are a few items we've worked on recently:






More to come soon! :)