These Kate and Izzy pieces are the definition of “affordable custom coture.” They are beautifully made and adorable. My daughters once again debut as models for the Vertical Stripe Feed Sack Dress and matching Bloomers. The end result of this idea is far better than I anticipated. We now have these dresses and bloomers at O’Child Children’s Boutique in Bloomington. We hope you enjoy and appreciate these as much as we do!

More deliveries have been made to O’Child. Last week we delivered Washboard Girls Tank dresses in pink and black and in sizes 12 months to 6. Today we dropped off Sun Bonnet Sue Apron and Heirloom Dresses. These are a set and are some of our best work. Sun Bonnet Sue was widely used from 1880-1940 in quilting and bonnet making. We had a number of panels which we used to make aprons to attach to dress in which we used vintage fabrics, vintage buttons and reproduction vintage fabrics. 

In the last 5 weeks my partner (aka mom) and I have completed 68 pieces for the O’Child Stores! This dress is the 4th set of 5 of Washboard Girls dresses for O’Child. Only a little over two dozen pieces left to go for the O’Child order and then it’s on to make new items for the Talbot Street Art Fair.

On Thursday and Friday we dropped off more dresses to O’Child Bloomington and Columbus. Thursday was my first visit to the Columbus store and it is a fantastic store! I’m honored to have our items there.

Here are the new dresses (and pants) we have at the stores. We hope you like them! We worked really hard on them. 

It is so exciting to have people start noticing our product! I was at our local grocery store, Bloomingfoods, and a man noticed my daughter’s black princess coat. He asked, “Is her coat from O’Child?” I was so excited that he recognized it plus his daughter has one of the fuchsia coats! Then four days later I was at the library and saw a 3 year old girl wearing one of our plum Washboard Girls dresses. Her mother said she loves it so much that she wears it 5 days a week! 

On the wave of success I made a trip to Piper Children’s Boutique in Fishers, Indiana scouting for a new store that might sell our product. I ran into the owners of the chain of stores and am excited to hear that they will also be attending the Talbot Street Art Fair (where we will be showing our clothing). I see many doors ready and waiting for us to open. Now we have to be ready to for what is behind them. 

Yesterday we added more Washboard Girls dresses to O’Child’s inventory. I think these dresses are so sunny and bright that the dress will make any little girl happy when she wears it! The pink dress I made for a first birthday gift. Happy birthday to June!

We made it! We were accepted into the Talbot Street Art Fair on June 9th and 10th in Indianapolis! We are so excited to be a part of this show and to be recognized as artists. 

We are still busily producing products for the O’Child stores. Today we will have the fuchsia princess coats and hats in the store. We will be making deliveries every week for the next 6 weeks or so. After that we will be producing products for the Talbot Street Art Fair and maybe for another store. We are still looking for another good fit store for our product. 

We’ve sewn 51 coats, 61 hats, and made 121 coordinating flowers to go on them in the last 2 years! Now we have more coats and hats delivered to O’Child in Bloomington, Indiana. These blue ones are there now and pink ones will be there next week. And by the way we have sold all but 2 coats and the remainder are in the store for sale for spring. 

Also at the store is this new Washboard Girls dress design. We’ve added a double ruffle to the bottom for a little extra frill!

We met with the owner of the O’Child Children’s Boutiques yesterday and we are proud to say there will be plenty of Annie’s Clothesline items in both stores. My mother now has 60 pieces to make and I have 35 dresses and 42 flowers t make! We do this all by ourselves and we need to get it done within the next few months. Can you believe we still want to have pursue having another store sell our product?! It is a lot of work but it is what we love to do! 

We attended the Annual New Year’s Day sale at our favorite fabric store, The Stitching Post. At the sale we picked out some new fabrics for our spring and summer collections. We hope our customers like them! Just looking at them makes me think of summer, even though winter just began.

Happy New Year! Annie’s Clothesline had a great end to the year! Thank you to our customers! We doubled our winter sales over last year. We hear that people are really interested in locally made items. We believe this to be true and the Bloomington Herald Times supports this by a mention or our business in the front section of the paper last week when they highlighted local businesses.

We certainly did a lot of sewing this fall for Annie’s Clothesline but we still managed to work in a few projects for Christmas gifts.

This picture shows only 6 of those projects. Making gifts for our families gives us the opportunity to try new patterns and ideas. Some make it into our work for the business others don’t. Our practice of making prototypes ensures that the customers get our best work.