Changing direction in my business and creating for myself
I've always had a need to be constantly creating. I go from one thing to another and then another, occasionally using my skills to produce income for our family of 7. At the end of 2020 (weird year, right!?) I had used a vintage quilt to create a tote bag and had so much leftover, I decided to make some stockings and just sell them on Facebook Marketplace.. evidently, THAT was what many shoppers were looking for, because I sold out immediately. So, I found another cutter quilt, made some more, and... sold out again.
I repeated the frenzied sewing well through Christmas, with many people buying to have them for the following year and sold just over 300! When it settled down, I realized that I had so many teeny tiny scraps that weren't really useful so I came up with the idea to make garlands and a small handmade business was born in January 2021. I reactivated my previous Etsy shop (serial entrepreneur, remember) and got to work!
“...evidently, THAT was what many shoppers were looking for, because I sold out immediately..”
I added new products to the shop, including Easter baskets, that had a very similar success to the stockings. Having had to design and template my pattern for those, I decided to write it up and sell it separately for anyone wanting to try their hand at making their own or wanted use their very own vintage cutter quilt.
Then Came The Fanny Pack
A year later, I turned around and wrote my own fanny pack pattern as well so that customers could make their very own versions of my best sellers. This was the tipping point for me. I loved the design and creation process, but had realized (almost at the beginning) that:
The vintage quilt trend that I lucked into and was early on, was NOT going to last forever - especially with stores like Target mass producing faux patchwork left and right.
Cottage-y vintage quilt decor was NOT my personal style, making photographing my products an extra chore.
Our family has big plans/hopes/dreams of moving overseas and dealing with a small business where shipping things would become really challenging, didn't sound great. At all.
So, I decided to scale back and plan to move towards digital patterns; the two I had were really taking off and doing well, so this gave me the VERY needed confidence boost to continue down this path.
In the meantime, I fell HEAD OVER HEELS IN LOVE with quilting in the spring of 2022 and was on fire. I loved that I could apply the techniques and skills I had seen and learned while working with hundreds of antique and vintage quilts, but put my own spin on them!
The moment I realized that most people don't just make up their own patterns and sew whatever they think up in the quilting world, was the moment that I decided to create quilt patterns. I wanted to inspire and enable other quilters to create modern and unique quilts of their own, too.
And now, I'm here. Launching my first official pattern in January, and I am so excited for this change! Thank you for following along and for all of the quilty love.
Comments