patterns and books

I have two things to share today.

First, I have had the most wonderful time choosing books for my new Amazon affiliate bookshop. The bookshop has several categories, each filled with books I love. When you click through from my links and purchase a book I get a very small percentage of the sale. It’s small, but when you are working to earn a living with your craft, even very small earnings count. I added a tab to the navigation bar up there so that you can easily click over to the bookshop.

One category is, “What’s Roxanne Reading?”. As you may have figured out,  Roxanne, who is now in second grade, is an avid reader. Really, avid doesn’t express it fully. She is a constant devourer of books. It is a joy to choose books for her because she gets so much pleasure from the really good ones.  I have put all of her very favorites here, in one list, in case you have a young bookworm in your life, too. This list will be updated frequently.  She reads at least three hours a day.

There is a category of “Books I’ve Reveiwed” and another of “Sewing Books I Like”.

My favorite category of all, and the one that I think may be most valuable to you, is the “Soft Toy Books”. I learned to sew toys by reading soft toy books and sewing through pattern after pattern.  Here you can find the books that I found to be most valuable in my learning. Many of them are out of print.

Which leads me to the last category: “Abby’s Books”. Right now you’ll find The Artful Bird there (which was just named a top ten craft book of 2011 on the ALA Booklist!). But in the spring of 2013, you’ll find my book about soft toy design there as well.

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And also, today, I wanted to show you a huge box full of vintage sewing patterns that my friend gave me recently.

There are a lot of gems in here.

Maybe 50 patterns in total, all in their original envelopes. From the 1970’s, or 1980’s?

I don’t sew clothes and I don’t use traditional sewing patterns. What can I say. Cutting in a straight line, doing math, following someone else’s instructions – none of that appeals to me. But I know these patterns would be awesome for someone.  Maybe one of you?

So I’m giving them away! If you’d like this entire lot of patterns, I’ll mail it to you for the cost of shipping!  Leave me a comment saying you’d like them and they are yours. I’m imagining shipping within the US will be under $10. It could be significantly more outside the US.

Awesome.

So thanks in advance for checking out my new bookshop. And happy sewing!