Allie Olson is the co-founder of Indiesew, a curated ecommerce site offering “sewing patterns for the modern woman.” With Indiesew Allie and her business partner, Steve Herschleb, are working to promote independent sewing pattern designers and create community among women who love to sew their own clothes. Allie carefully chooses the designers and patterns that…
How to Set Year-Long Goals for Your Creative Business
I have trouble thinking big. I’ll happily write a daily to-do list and plow through it, but ask me to dream about what could be and I get very uncomfortable. I’m not a big risk taker, I’m really careful with money, and I definitely don’t want to sink all my energy into a crazy idea…
How Bartering Can Help You Grow Your Creative Business
I got a lovely email yesterday from someone I’ve never met. Her name is Karen Katin and here’s what she said: Abby, As a subscriber to your newsletter and avid reader of your blog, I wanted to say “Thank You” for the creative service that you are providing through your words and products. I find…
Book Review: The Ultimate Sock Puppet Book by Tiger Kandel and Heather Schloss
Four years ago at Christmas time I was doing some holiday shopping on Etsy and came across SockHollow, an Etsy shop with wonderfully charming sock puppets like I’d never seen before. I bought two (a zebra and a giraffe) for our good friend, Huck, who was in preschool at the time. When they came I…
Why I Still Love Etsy
image source I opened my Etsy shop on July 3, 2005. At that time setting up an independent ecommerce shop was an onerous task that required technical skills I didn’t have. Etsy was like a miracle. A week later I made my first sale. I’d been sewing plush toys for months and was desperate for…
Should You Work for Free Product?: A Case Study of the Glue Dots Design Team
image credit I’ve worked for free fabric. Last year I designed a tutorial for Timeless Treasures to post on their blog. It took me about four hours to design it, sew it, photograph each step, take the beauty shots, and write the instructions. I was paid in fat quarter bundles and several yards of flannel….
An Inside Look at Designing Premier Quilting Cottons for JoAnns
While doing research for my post about how much fabric designers earn I spoke with a fabric designer who has licensed fabric collections to both a fabric company and to the largest chain of brick-and-mortar fabric stores in the United States, JoAnn Fabrics. The financial arrangement that resulted from working with JoAnns was so different…
An Inside Look at How Much Fabric Designers Earn
image credit Designing quilting cottons is a significant status symbol in the sewing world, and for good reason. Fabric is beautiful. It’s the raw material that draws many of us into sewing in the first place. The chance to design your own collection, to sew with it and see other people sewing with it, is…
Where Do Bloggers Fit Among Established Sewing and Crafting Institutions
The Craft and Hobby Association (CHA) announced last week that they’ve added a new membership category specifically for bloggers. Founded in 2004, CHA is an international, not-for-profit trade association consisting of thousands of member companies engaged in the design, manufacture, distribution and retail sales of products in the nearly $30 billion U.S. craft and hobby…
Naming Your Competition
In the spring I hired a designer to create my new WordPress site. Once I’d signed the contract and paid the deposit, she sent me an in-depth survey to help us both drill down to how I really wanted my new website to function. Some parts of the survey were fun, like telling the story…
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