New Ideas for Pip

Posted: January 4th, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: Stuff I Want You to See | 1 Comment »

Pip Robins has been slowing down for the season, even though winter just started a couple of weeks ago. The business is a far cry from the months of getting several orders of cowls a day. There was one evening where I got seven orders in four hours. No more daily post office trips, no more sewing until midnight. I have more spare time than I know what to do with, and to be honest, it makes me a little uncomfortable. Now that crafting is in my life, I don’t know what I did without it! It feels very weird. I much prefer to be busy all night than sit around and do nothing.

Since cowls are so seasonal, I’m struggling to come up with a new idea for warmer weather. I am tired of purses, even though I have a dozen of them cut out and ready to sew, I just can’t bring myself to finish them. Making them brought out the creative side to my personality, something I’d never delved into before, outside of writing, I suppose. I don’t want to let Pip Robins die during the warmer months, so I have to find a new product.

I’m experimenting with these collars that I invented. I haven’t seen anything like this out there, ever. Sure, there are lots of different kinds of collars, but these ones are reversible and close with a magnetic clasp (I was accidentally sent the wrong size clasps by a supplier, so I had nothing to do with them until I figured these out). I was walking to pick up Ash from daycare one day and trying to figure out a closure other than a button or a snap (neither of which I’m good at doing), and the magnetic clasp popped into my head and I got SO excited that I could hardly wait to go home and sew my prototype (which you can see in my About page).

I was originally thinking about making the ones with clasps for children, but since my son is a terrible clothing model (he just wants to rip them off), I couldn’t really showcase them properly, so I never ended up doing them.

I don’t know. I really like them, I like to wear them, and I’m hoping they catch on for the rest of the year. Last year everyone was wearing those fashion scarves, so in an ideal world, people should switch to cowls!