More Ideas!!

Yesterday, I took my daughter to a local mall to play in their play space. Well, after lunch, she crashed in the stroller, so I decided to walk around a bit and let her sleep. I found a store called "Strasburg Children", which is a really expensive special occasion store for children up to size 14 in girls. The lady working in there offered me a catalogue to take home and share with my dh (haha), and I accepted it. I brought it home, and boy, did I find all kinds of neat ideas to include in my own designs! Readers, if you aren't familiar with Strasburg Children, all their clothes, for the most part, are hand-made or hand-decorated with lots and lots of smocking, tasteful embroidery, and using high-quality materials. Each item has French seaming, piping, etc. Absolutely gorgeous! Of course, I didn't tell her that I design baby clothes (well, Christening dresses), but I did get a lot of ideas with various pieces of styling they use. (If you want to see a sampling of their items, check out www.strasburgchildren.com) After I sat down and thought about it, I was able to figure out how to 'copy' some of the ideas and I was mentally able to 'see' the stitches required to do this.

I began writing down my ideas on some paper, and realized that if someone else were to try to follow my directions, they may need to actually see an example of what I'm talking about. So, I've decided to put together a designer's notebook. I've seen all kinds of knitters' notebooks, quilters' notebooks, and seamstress notebooks, but never have I seen a crochet designer notebook. So, I've decided to make one. Hmm...what should I put in it?

Let's see...

• basic stitches
• pattern stitches
• sizing directions
• sewing directions translated into crochet patterns (which is what the premise behind this thing would be)
• graphs
• decoration implementation (i.e., bobbles, beads, faux-smocking, etc.)

I'll have to think about it some more...As I work on it, perhaps I'll publish it here online to share with everyone...I'll have to see what kind of response I get.

Tata for now!!