I feel like sometimes i have a terrible habit of not telling you all what i’m up to until the very last minute. I don’t know why… maybe it’s nervousness. Whatever the case, I thought you might be interested in what I’m working on.
You may or may not know, but along with my clothing line, I actually sell sewing patterns too. It has only been maternity/nursing patterns and they’ve been in PDF form, as I lacked the resources to get them more professionally manufactured. To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of PDF patterns – they’re a pain to create, and a pain for the customer to use. But regardless, they have been a huge success. Actually I’ve been blown away by how popular they are. So I’ve been wanting to change the way I do things. To move to more professional packaging, proper full size patterns, and no more PDF’s.
The trouble is, commerical patterns actually bother me too. Long time readers will remember me ranting from time to time about this. But there are just so many irritating things; the weird sizing, the tissue paper that rips for any and every reason, the strange layout of the instructions, the evil tiny envelope that no matter how hard you try you can never fit the pattern back into… So I’ve decided to make my patterns a little different. I’ll be using larger envelopes that are sturdy and have lots of room, patterns will be on translucent but sturdy paper, so they can be used over and over without tearing – and instructions will be clearly laid out in booklets. It’s been a lot of work. But I’m really excited.
And so while I’ve been working on re-grading my maternity patterns, and extending the sizing to be XS to XL for all patterns, and basically reworking how I do everything – I also started thinking about releasing the patterns from my clothing line. There seems to have been quite a bit of interest, so in the next few months I’ll be slowly releasing patterns from my past collections. I’ll be starting with the Darling Ranges dress from last fall – and then followed most likely by the Gumnut Coat and Banksia top from the same collection. And depending on how well they’re received, I’m planning on releasing the patterns to all my designs.
So that’s the plan. phew.
