FAQ: Why Cows? Moobury? etc.

FAQ: Why cows? 🤔

Seeing that cows aren't exactly the animals people associate with luxury or cuteness that's a very fair question!

When I first started this project, I was mainly making earmuffs to fit my style and wardrobe. Seeing that this brand was a reflection of me, I had to pick something near and dear to me, the moo moos 🐄🐄🐄!!
Cows were my favorite animals growing up because my Chinese zodiac sign is the Ox. So when I was a kid, my parents would buy me a stuffed cow plush every birthday. I associated cows very much with their love, and as gift giving was a rare occurrence in my household (Santa's reindeers weren't able to fly to Taiwan) it was the most exciting time of the year to wake up to a new cow plush waiting by my bedside for me to hug.
Eventually I was too old to wake up to cows on my birthday, but my parents continued to encouraged the cow obsession, saying that liking something different 'builds character'.

Many people after meeting me, can never see cows the same way again. Cows are not just delicious, but a special symbol of love, happiness, and warmth that inspires confidence in UG's world. And so when it comes time for me to 'build' something to share, incorporating #cows are a must!

FAQ: Why is the name Moobury?

1. I am obsessed with cows! (Moo!)
2. This whole venture started when I was trying to 'bury' the earmuff-shaped hole in my heart.
3. It's catchy and rhymes with Burberry

FAQ: How long does it take for you to handmake an earmuff?

Each earmuff takes roughly 6 hours to make. This does not include the time spent researching and developing the different designs.
At some point I was able to push myself to 'complete' an earmuff in the 2-3 hour frame, however it came at the price of me overlooking small flaws and very cramped hands. 😖👎
Nowadays I give myself the time I need to make every stitch perfect. I want to enjoy the process, and have customers that can accept and appreciate that.

Season 3 Moobury is here!

Dear Moo-Friends,

The weather is getting cold again, and so begins Moobury Season 3!

I'm really proud of this collection because I poured all that I learned from making close to 100 earmuffs by hand over the last two winters into this season's designs.  From the very beginning my goal for Moobury was to replace the Burberry cashmere earmuffs I lost in the dry-cleaner mishap.

A look back on my birthday party 3 years ago, where everyone came to help me make earmuffs.

As much as I made that claim to others, I only half believed it myself.  I was perfectly content thinking I was going to recoup my losses by learning new things with my friends and building memories.  Little did I know that people would take my vocalized sadness on something that now looks so silly and small, so seriously.

This season I have outdone Burberry, and made cashmere earmuffs of my own! My revenge is complete.  I have bought higher quality/expensive material that I was scared to work with in the past, and focused in on the precision of my hand-sewing.

Thank you to all the moo-friends that helped me with sewing, photo-shoots, website design, selling, and social media.  Thank you to all the moo-friends that bought earmuffs and Moobowy totes to fund another season of Moobury.  And thank you to all the Etsy customers that read my story and reached out to me saying they too were trying to replace earmuffs they lost. 

This all has been a wonderful adventure and has provided me closure.  All of you have successfully buried that earmuff-shaped hole in my heart.  So without further ado please enjoy the fruits of your labor, here.

If you like what you see, please spread the word of Moobury, and invite them to follow us on facebook and instagram for updates.

<3 Eugenia

Portia

Portia!

I’d like to dedicate this entry to Portia (aka Conx).  She’s one of the founders of Moobury, and has gotten little recognition for being such a big part of what it is today.  Without her there would be no Moobury earmuffs! *gasps* a world without moo-muffs?!

That’s right, Conx is my sewing mentor, she taught me how to sew and is the seamstress that figured out how to make the earmuffs by hand.  Without such a talented partner, I’d still be staring at pieces of fabric wishing for elves to appear and make my dreams come true.  Now I can be my own earmuff elf and fill Christmas orders for all the good boys and girls. ;)

Learning to make earmuffs took a lot of patience on my end, but teaching a novice to make earmuffs took a marathon’s worth of endurance and patience on Portia’s end.  After about 10 painstaking hours of trial, error and seam ripping, we got our first pair of earmuffs!  

And then another 10 more (100+ hours) for the earmuffs you see today. 

As I am reflecting back on the origins of Moobury, I would also like to take this time to thank all the friends that blindly ordered/invested in moo-muffs in the beginning.  Even when I didn’t even know how to sew you guys believed in me anyway. And I hope you all are proud to see how we’ve grown, couldn’t have done it without all the support. <3

Portia is a special earmuff on Moobury, it is the only one that is made and designed by Portia herself.  She hand embroidered the band on a beautiful stretch denim fabric.  This is a limited edition earmuff!! I cannot and will not make something so complicated; I leave it to the master.  So for anyone that is into one-of-a-kind craftsmanship, the Portia earmuff is for you!  (Her birthday is also coming up, so it would be awesome to tell her a design of hers sold…*still keeping my fingers crossed*)

These days Portia is working as a quantitative data analyst at Cogo Labs.  We haven’t been able to make earmuffs together since I moved to NJ, so she’s been doing her own hobby crafting.  She makes these super intricate silk habotoi and charmeuse scarves, hand painted, heat set and then hand washed.  Each scarf takes more than 30 hours to make, a true labor of love.  She’s available to be commissioned if anyone is interested in a particular design (ie. Moocow. lol), otherwise keep checking in the shop to see if any of Portia Considine's masterpieces start popping up. 

Thai Fisherman Pants DIY

Lately I’ve been finding this new sewing/crafting hobby quite useful.  I’ve been feeling much less restricted as I now have options I didn't have before.  I can actually create my ideas!  In the past I could only shop for what I wanted, and when I couldn't find what I was looking for, I would end up settling.  I buy the next closest thing out of necessity, but always feeling unsatisfied.  So if my pickiness with earmuffs led me to start Moobury, it was only a matter of time before this obsessiveness seeped into other aspects of my life.

In my spare time, I’ve been working on a series of at home projects that give me a good creative outlet.  Bit by bit I’m creating the world I want to have around me.

My most recent d.i.y project was a pair of thai fisherman pants.  It was a favor for a friend because he’s quite tall, and somehow all the pants available online are too short/one size fits all. #onesizedoesNOTfitall #tallpeopleproblems

Since I wasn’t able to find a good sewing pattern with detailed measurements online, they were either ugly or extremely vague, I ended up purchasing a cheap pair off Amazon.  They fit me perfectly, cool, nothing’s going to waste.  I proceeded to trace the outline of individual pieces onto kraft paper, and made my friend put on the pants (one size fits all right?).  From there I measured which areas were short, what needed to be added, and extended the lines on my pattern as needed.

You will need about 3 yards of choice fabric or 2 yards for the bottom and 1 yard for the top if you want two colors.  I used 2 yards of bottom weight wine red denim, and  1 yard black linen for the belt/wrap area. The benefit of custom making is being able to adjust the design to better suit your needs, in this case a more durable fabric (denim) was chosen and velcro pockets were added in.  My friend wanted something that he could wear for the colder New England weather, and be functional for everyday use.  Not bad for the first clothing item I've ever made.

The helpful/not so helpful links were:

How to Make Thai Fisherman Pants

How to Tie - Thai Fisherman Wrap Pants

Halloween DIY Raccoon Costume

Make-up tidbit: seriously follow the contours of your face when outlining the your mask....you're more raccoon than you think. ;)

This halloween was a special.  It was the first time I got to give out candy to kids, and also my first time making my own costume!  In the past I would either buy one, or piece together random stuff from my closet and give my outfit a name.

So what drove me to this?

1.) I'm poor -  gotta buckle down on unnecessary spending to pay back my student loans.

2.) I was given a costume challenge - the raccoon.

I googled raccoon costumes online, and the search results made me cringe.  I was either going to look very frumpy or very cheap (bleh, not my style!), all while spending $60+ for something that is one-time wear.  And lets be honest, we girls like to look good even when we're being ridiculous.  So somehow I had to transform petite asian me into a cute sexy raccoon.

I set out to design a costume with clothes I can easily reuse, and had an idea of a draped faux fur vest and a crop top with a sweetheart neckline.  I came across Coolirpa's tutorial for the sweetheart top, and made one quickly out of this stretchy black lyrca fabric that I retired from one of my earmuff designs.  This worked out perfectly: I recycled trash material, already channeling the spirit of the raccoon. Some call this method-acting.

Then I went shopping at Nordstrom, the vests were all in the $200 range, I took down notes at what they did for material, lining and pockets versus what I was looking for.  Then I went straight to the fabric warehouse and picked up the softest gray faux fur I could find($20/yd) and some black jersey knit($2/yd).  I traced the individual pieces of my favorite cardigan on the the back of the faux fur and jersey knit.  I picked that particular vintage Ralph Lauren cardigan because its big and drapey, but still shaped well to the outline of my body by cinching in all the right place.  I was not a fan of the boxy designs I saw at the stores.

Quick DIY summary:

1. Cut and sew together faux fur pieces(3)
2. Put on in-process vest and decide what's a comfortable pocket location. Pin it, reverse it and cut out pocket slits.
3. Make pockets. (I simulated the pockets from a trench coat I got in Japan because the size and location of the pocket fit my arms better.)
4. Hand sew on pocket. 
5. Sew together lining piece with fur vest.  Make sure to hand sew armholes and bottom closure, the rest can be machine sewn.

I'm not an expert at DIY, but I'm happy with how this turned out.  And being able to combine my favorite elements of the clothes I already have, makes this the comfiest outerwear I have now.  Typically jersey knit is not what people use for clothing lining, but I chose it since I wanted to wear this out into the cold, and like to still have the comfy feel of my bedsheets hugging me everywhere I go. :P

For animal ear tutorial, please see here.

Tail wasn't anything fancy, use scrap faux fur(from the vest fabric) + polyfil, and wrapped the black fabric on.  For a more realistic effect I'd suggest looking into painting black stripes onto the fur instead.

Raccoon Out!