Page 118 - One Thousand Ways to Make $1000

hands. Many a small business has been built up by someone who started
making aprons and selling them to her neighbors. Nelly Donnelly is today
one of the most successful makers of women’s dresses and aprons in the
United States. She started this business in a little workroom in the attic of her
Kansas City home. Most manufacturers thought then that women would not
pay more than 69 or 79 cents for wash frocks to wear about the house. Nelly
Donnelly knew better and proved it by building a success with $1.00 wash
dresses. Many women have found that men like their shirts made to order and
will pay a little more for a well-tailored garment. Handmade handkerchiefs
for men and women, curtains and draperies, slip-covers for furniture, hand-
quilted comfortables and “throws,” smocks, shoe and dress bags, infants’ and
children’s garments, fancy costumes for parties and school plays, collar and
cuff sets, are other suggestions. The secret of success in this field is not to try
to compete with cheap merchandise now on the market. People are willing to
pay a price for handmade things. Make your dresses, aprons, shirts, and other
things of excellent material and good workmanship and put a good price on
them.

M etal—There is a vogue just now for articles made of tin. Almost any type
of tin can be used to make such things as candlesticks, book ends, vases,
boxes, sconces, and toys for children. All that is needed in the way of
equipment is a work bench, a pair of leather gloves, a pair of heavy shears, a
block of wood, a wooden mallet, a pair of dividers, a half round file, a vise,
and a soldering outfit. The finished product should be given two coats of
paint. In addition to making useful and ornamental objects of this metal one
may use other metals such as embossed copper, brass, and pewter. These
require a little more skill in handling. Tin may also be embossed. Hand-
wrought iron equipment for fireplaces, home-markers (swinging sign at the
gate), foot-scrapers, lanterns for colonial doorways, and other such items are
in demand today, due, no doubt, to the revival of interest in the colonial mode
of decoration. Lighting fixtures of wood and copper or wrought iron and
wood are simple to make. Not long ago a woman inventor in Chicago grossed
$6,000 a month, making hair curlers out of lip stick containers. Sheet metal is
another material which can be handled dexterously by the amateur craftsman.
This material makes up into good-looking stands, baskets, racks, shelves, fire
screens, bird cages, lawn ornaments, stools, tables, lamp bases, book ends,