About Jan Andrea Handmade

I've always liked to make things. I started sewing when I was 14 and couldn't find clothes that I liked in my size. I learned how to crochet, then how to knit, played with polymer clay, and designed and made paper models. Then my spouse and I had our first baby in 2000, and most of my crafts fell by the wayside. When I discovered babywearing, we had very little money, so I made my own slings. Folks would stop and ask where I got them, and so my first business, sleeping baby productions, was born. As the online world grew, so did my business, and thus for a very, very long time, I made baby slings.

In 2019, new CPSC regulations for slings went into effect, and I did my best to keep up with the new costs associated with the standard, as well as its prohibition on making slings from customers' wraparound carriers. Unfortunately, the way people shopped for baby carriers had changed so much by 2021, sling sales were no longer much higher than my expenses, and I made the difficult decision to close SBP in January of 2022.

But... I couldn't stop making things! I'd been doing chainmaille jewelry as a hobby for years (my spouse's fault -- he's made several actual chainmaille shirts, and got me into it as well), and had sewn accessories to go with the slings I made. And I'd also bought *a lot* of printed cottons for making fabric face masks during the height of the pandemic, which were just begging to be made into something more. 

Hence, Jan Andrea Handmade. Everything on the site is made by me, and believe me, there's a lot more to come! I hope you'll find something here that speaks to you, and that it gives you as much delight to use it as it's given me to make it.