The Golden Tree Hand Emb...
The Accidental Stitcher
£275.00 1 in stock
“A plethora of handmade items, all lovingly made by my geeky family and I”
Here are some things just listed by other crafters and sellers on Folksy.
I've always made things. For as long as I can remember, doing all sorts of arts & crafts has brought me a lot of pleasure. I was blessed to have incredibly talented and creative parents, so I got my love of it from them. I was also blessed to discover that my husband is incredibly creative and artistic too, so he has always supported my many crafting ventures! And we noticed from a very young age that our son (now 21) was creative as well, particularly on an artistic/design front.
My other love was fancy dress, something that my husband was into as well. And as our son got older and discovered a love for all things Marvel related, we also discovered the joy that is cosplay. But with none of us being 'standard sizes' or having the budget for buying ready-made, cosplay level costumes, I decided to get into making them myself. Friends would always be amazed at the costumes I made and would ask me to make them things. So they would frequently say I should make it into a business. I never thought that would be possible, so I reluctantly pushed that idea to the back of my mind as a daydream. Sadly in 2012 I lost my darling Dad and then in 2015 I lost my beautiful Mum. So I was left thinking, what do I want to do with my life. I felt I need to take it down a route that followed my dreams, that lived every day to the best I could achieve. So with my inheritance, we set about creating a home life and business that would make my parents proud.
The perfect opportunity arose in the summer of 2017, when a local fancy dress & seamstress business was listed for sale. My wonderful husband was extremely receptive to my latest bonkers undertaking and by August 2017 there I was, sitting in my very own little shop, the living embodiment of Mr Benn, with over 2000 costumes to play with! Through this I was able to advertise my cosplay costume design side of things and have had some great commissions over the past few years! But also, the business had another side to it that was gaining momentum - that of being the town seamstress! Gradually, then leading up to pretty much every day, people would pop into my shop asking for their clothes and soft furnishings to be altered, re-designed or made. And because of this, I ended up with boxes and boxes of fabric cut offs. All beautiful fabrics that were just too lovely to be thrown away. So I decided to find a way to reuse/repurpose them. I started off with making cushions and patchwork skirts etc.and gradually researched other ideas of lovely things to make with all this mountain of fabric!
Unfortunately though, the fancy dress side to the business was starting to struggle. With the combination of a plethora of cheap, easily available costumes online, combined with a general feeling of uncertainty in what was going on in the world, less and less people were thinking about hiring. And the sewing side of the business was the only thing that was just about covering the shop overheads each month, so it became a huge financial drain. But I didn't want to give up my dream, so we kept plodding on, with my wonderful husband backing up the bills with his wage. Then March 2020 happened. The world fell off it's hinges, we were all locked down and my shop was the epitome of an 'unessential business'. So we had to think of a back-up plan. What could we do to stop Fancy Pants from becoming yet another small business statistic of this awful pandemic? Thankfully we have a double garage at home and my husband is a dab hand at DIY and building. So in April 2020 we left the shop (big thanks to our landlord who let us leave early) and spent the remainder of 2020 converting our garages into a workshop & hire studio. It was a time of extreme exhaustion, frustration and worry. My husband's main job is working as a business analyst manager for the NHS, so he was being run ragged with all the heightened stress on the hospitals at that time. And I started making laundry bags, masks and headbands etc for nurses & carers, all from the breakfast bar in the kitchen. Which then ended up in becoming a massive undertaking with huge amounts of mask orders for the general public, when it was announced that we had to wear masks as we were gradually allowed out of the first lockdown. I must have ended up making the best part of 2000 masks during 2020/2021. So whilst working on getting the garages converted in the evenings and weekends on top of our other work, we pretty much worked 24/7. But it was all worth it and my husband created the most perfect workspace I could have ever wished for. Fancy Pants Emporium arose like a phoenix out of the ashes and presented itself to a waiting, if a little shaky, world, in it's new setting and look.
The latter end of 2020 and most of 2021 still proved to be very quiet on the hire front. So it became really apparent that we had to continue to find a way to diversify, in order to keep the business going. Subsequently, the hire side of things has now become the sideline and the creative side to the business is now very much the main part of it. And born out of this need to diversify, the 3 of us are now using our creativity to the max. I'm sewing pretty much every day, making all sorts of things and when I'm not doing that, I'm making various items and jewellery from resin. My husband is building up our t shirt printing side of things which is working out really well and our son is our main artistic/design source. We now do regular stalls and events like family fun days, Christmas fayres, music events and Pride events. And we take a lot of pleasure in disappearing off to the workshop on a Sunday, popping some music on and just letting our creative juices flow! But with all these things we're making now, we need another platform to sell them through, when the fairs and events aren't on. We looked at a variety of online markets, but they all seemed so large and saturated by so many sellers. We then found out about Folksy. It sounded perfect, just what we were looking for. So here we are - Fancy Pants Emporium Ltd, it's gone from high street shop, to converted garages and now also online. It's hard work, but it's wonderful work. And we love every minute of it. Thank you for taking the time to read this – if you managed to get all the way to the end! As you may have noticed, I have a tendency to waffle!!
Oh and when writing this, we were also asked if we have a cat! And yes we do. The most beautiful, perfect, mini black panther called Shuri. She is my beautiful girl, my baby and my supurrvisor when doing all things sewing related. Those of you who sew and have cats will know what I mean!!
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