Molly Mouse Makes has been around since June, from January it was Crafts By Molly Louise, which was lengthy, awkward and sort of a placeholder. My sister suggested the name change, the name has history. The history makes it personal and exciting, mostly just for my family, but it's still important.
I was given the nickname of Molly Mouse from a very young age. Maybe it was because I was adorable and quiet or more likely because the same year I was born loads of mouse related clothing and books were released. I think until mid-secondary school I had "mollymouse" in my email address. I like that my childhood nickname has come back to me. My sister, BethanyWalkerDesign did all my branding and I think she did an amazing job, the mouse icons can be seen on various stickers and on my business cards. They pop up when they want to and they're incredibly cute. I have an incredibly talented sister.
Textiles at school was not my thing. I made a kite out of ripstop and a fleece hat, they're probably somewhere in the loft. I definitely will need to find them at some point. I wonder if I would have enjoyed it more if I could have picked some cute fabric rather than a choice of plain fabric scraps the school had leftover, maybe I was always destined to prefer resistant materials and make a tiny coffee table. I wonder if I would be doing what I am had I not done textiles when I was 11-13 years old. I think I possibly would, since I originally started handsewing things, whereas in textiles it was all machine sewing. I only had a needle and cotton because my apron from work had a hole in it and they wouldn't give me more than one in the year and a half I was there so I had to fix it regularly.
To start with there were a bunch of scrunchies available and one flat makeup bag, that I believe is unlined and never sold. The masks started in March as a joke. It was when the pandemic was not yet a pandemic and no one really knew whether to take it seriously because there was such a lack of information. We'd just gotten back from Disneyland Paris and seen minimal people in masks and the joke was I could make masks. All of a sudden it stopped being a joke and here I am six months later. I've made over 2000 masks. I think, if there was safer access from my bed to my sewing machine, eventually I might end up sleep-sewing masks. None of us saw this coming, I spend all day every day sewing things, mostly masks, sometimes for no reason I get a reality check and it blows my mind that some days I make over 50 masks for orders. I think there's been a few days where I've managed to make 100 masks, to me that's crazy.
Let's mentally remove sewing for a bit because this still doesn't feel real. I recently graduated from university. I studied Psychology full time for three years, which was cut short in March a little bit before the lockdown. I've known for years where I want to take my career, which didn't stop me applying for my masters around a week before the deadline. I decided in my first year on uni that sitting in a lecture hall having a powerpoint read to me was not my thing. This means I will be studying Forensic Psychology as an online masters degree from January, it's part time so I can keep doing what I'm doing.
The idea of this is to go further than the products I am putting up for sale. Everything has a story behind it, the products, the fabric, the combinations and I wanted somewhere to talk about it so I stop driving my family mad. Over the past few months I've made a handful of my own clothes, they're not perfect and I will never ever sell clothing, but they're huge achievements for me and I want to share that. This is also where I want to show things I have bought from other small shops. I'm fortunate to have been able to connect with so many lovely small businesses because of my shop and I feel like a 24 hour post on my story just does not do their business or products justice.