My Scrubbie Adventure

I mentioned in my post on Pet Mats that I was busy making Scrubbies.  These little things seem to control my life at times.  In case you hadn’t already figured it out, I like to crochet.  I sell crochet items in my Etsy Shop and at craft shows.  Several years ago in my never-ending quest to find quickly made crochet items that sell, someone brought my attention to scrubbies.  I looked around on the internet (this was before I found Pinterest) and didn’t really find a lot of patterns for scrubbies.  The ones I did find were flat, not puffy like I had in my head.  I did get information on what type of material to use and a general idea of what I wanted to do.  With this information, I purchased some nylon net material and set out to create my own pattern.  

I took the first 50 I made to a craft show and priced them at $1.00 each.  People were excited to find them, said that their grandma used to make them.  People who had used them before, swore that they were the best thing to clean with.  I was selling multiples to one person and they were sold out in no time.

After that I started taking enough scrubbies to cover my booth fee.  This was at times challenging to keep up with between stripping material, tying and rolling the strips and then making the scrubbie.  One scrubbie takes me around 15-20 minutes to make plus the stripping and tying time.   I also have a regular 9-5 job; dinner to make, laundry to do, etc.; so you can see why it was hard to keep up with when I wanted to have 50+ at a show each time.  

As if this wasn’t bad enough, I started selling them in my Etsy Shop.  At first I didn’t really sell many but when I started listing them in bundles of 10, sales took off.  Now I was no longer taking them to any shows because it was all I could do to keep up with internet sales.  I also had people asking for large quantities, it was all too much!  I was burnt out on scrubbies and they were consuming my life!

Now it was January and time to rethink what I was doing with scrubbies.  Even if I made 2-3 per day, every day, I wasn’t sure I could keep up with what I could sell.  My solution was to write a pattern and sell that.  The pattern sales have been slow and it yields less income but is much less stress.  This year I will be selling my items in only two of the shows we are doing and they will be priced at $1.50.  This way I will need to sell fewer to make my booth fee.  I will also have a flyer at my table with how to purchase the pattern from my Etsy Shop.  I am diligently building up my stock and I’m halfway to my goal.  

Hoping this is now a better scrubbie adventure!

Purchase My Pattern Here

Nylon Net Material from JoAnn Fabrics