Edited: Threadbias responded to this post and I published their response here.
The longer I’ve worked as an independent sewing pattern designer, the more it’s become apparent to me that those of us who sew are missing out on something amazing. We are missing out on Ravelry.
Ravelry is a free site for knitters and crocheters. Ravelry is an organizational tool, a yarn and pattern database, a social site, and a tool for small businesses, all in one. It currently has over 3 million users. Think about that number for a minute. It’s incredible.
Founded five years ago, in May of 2007, by spouses, Jessica and Cassidy Forbes, Ravelry has become the central website for fiber artists. It’s a thriving social network and so much more. Users routinely say that once you see how Ravelry works it will ruin the rest of the internet for you. It’s that good.
When the site first began it functioned as a virtual binder for users to hold their patterns and supplies. Early users asked for a way to talk with one another. Cassidy bresearched forum sites, didn’t really like how any of them functioned, and set about creating one in her own style. Groups came next, allowing users to further gather around specific interests. Next came buttons, similar to but cooler than the Facebook “like” button, that allow you to love, agree, or disagree with a post, and mark it as funny, interesting, and educational. The majority of the site’s users participate in the discussion forums.
The social aspect doesn’t stop there. People use Ravelry to plan local meet-ups and events. They trade and sell parts of their stash to one another. Last year’s Ravellenic Games, a community craft-along that took place in tandem with the Olympics, had 10,000 participants creating 55,000 projects.
And perhaps most importantly, users feel strongly that they are working together to build this community right along with Jessica and Cassidy. Ravelry users spend their own time adding to and cleaning up the database and volunteering to help other users in the help chats. And Jessica and Cassidy have given users quite a bit of power to help form and maintain the site. Ravelry is generous and trusting the way an in-person community would be.
Ravelry truly shines as a research tool. It is full of useful information helpfully organized. Every pattern has detailed tags and attributes allowing for a very powerful search engine. While searching Ravelry for patterns, you can keep track of ones that look interesting, then go back and look at them more closely later. You can plug in a particular yardage of a particular yarn and find the perfect project. You can see finished projects other people have made from those patterns, and variations and notes. You can set up your own library in Ravelry, add books and magazines and PDF pattern that you own, and then search through them. Even if you don’t have interest in the site as a place to find community, if you knit or crochet you’ll quickly come to rely on its wealth of information about patterns and yarns.
How does Ravelry make money? Ravely took no venture capital and has no plans to go public. There are no membership fees. The plan all along was to make a profit through advertising. Cassidy and Jessica want Ravelry’s users with small businesses to be able to afford to advertise on the site so they created an advertising model to allow for this. The fees are low and they have many 100’s of advertisers with small budgets. In addition Ravely has a merchandise store and it allows designers to sell patterns as digital downloads, taking a small fee. As a pattern designer selling on Ravelry here is what you pay:
$0 to $30 in monthly sales: free
$30.01 to $100in monthly sales: 5% of total sales
$100.01 to $250 in monthly sales: $5
$250.01 to $1000: $10
$1000.01 to$2500.00: $20
$2500.01 and up: $50
As a designer you can use the Ravelry shopping cart on your own site. That in itself is amazing – you don’t need to pay for a separate ecommerce service! Imagine if Etsy allowed you to install their shopping cart on your blog and didn’t insist that customers log on in order to make a purchase.
Designers have embraced this model whole-heartedly. In 2012 1,114,909 patterns were sold on Ravelry resulting in $6,177,399.87 in sales. 98% went to the designers directly. Two words come to mind about this structure: generous and trusting.
Okay so I think I’ve made the case that Ravelry is amazing. But here’s the question on my mind. Is there something inherent to the fiber arts that makes a site like Ravelry possible? If not, then why isn’t there a sewing equivalent to Ravelry?
I put this question on Twitter this morning and here are some of the responses I got:
- Knitting had a resurgence earlier than sewing. Sewing is just now hitting its stride.
- Sewing is cliquey. There are quilters, garment sewers, embroiderers, and crafters. We are divided.
- Yarn is different from fabric. Matching yarn to a project is a more specific thing than matching fabric to a pattern. It’s helpful to see what others used.
- Yarn is in a more “raw” state than fabric. It’s more like solids than printed fabric. Seeing what others have used is more informative.
- It’s difficult to print sewing patterns from a home printer.
- Knitting and crochet are portable whereas sewing by machine isn’t.
- There’s already a tradition of community within knitting and crochet, while sewing is something you do alone.
Although I see each of these points as valid in some way, I’m not sure I buy the overall argument that this just isn’t possible.
There have been many starts: MySewingCircle, Kollabora, Threadbias, BurdaStyle, PatternReview, SeamedUp, and SewMamaSew’s new Sewing Room. Why are there seven? The more starts there are the more divided things become. Have we waited too long?
Let’s look for a minute at the longest standing and perhaps the largest of the seven: PatternReview. The site has some traction with over 300,000 members and 115,570 pattern reviews. Membership costs $30 for a year, though, and although members find the site to be helpful, they widely acknowledge that the user interface is clunky and badly in need of an update.
PatternReview is twice as old as Ravelry and not nearly as vibrant. Nobody is saying that once you see PatternReview it will ruin the rest of the internet for you. But it’s at least got active users and that’s perhaps the hardest part to build. What it needs is a visionary and a developer bring it into the modern age of the web.
Cassidy and Jessica are a rare team. They’ve got both the ability to describe a site people want and the skill to create it. I fail to believe that there’s something about sewing that makes it impossible for a Ravelry-like community to exist around it. We need this and I think with the right site created with vision and skill we will jump onboard.
I’ve been wondering this for ages! Most of my friends are knitters, and they all spend ages on Ravelry, to the point where Ravelry terminology (“disagree”) has become a part of basic conversation. When I started sewing I looked around for the equivalent, but found just bits and pieces. I think Pattern Review is the closest, but honestly the design and set up is so outdated that I don’t think the new guard of internet sewers is likely to pay any attention to it. I passed by it 3 or 4 times before I even saw what was really useful about it. OTOH, I started knitting a couple of months ago, and Ravelry is immediately inviting, and amazing for browsing patterns.
I wonder if Raverly would consider expanding into sewing as well, considering it already has such strong momentum?
I think Cassidy and Jess have been pretty clear that this isn’t their interest.
You can post on Ravelry whatever projects you want. Just pick a Category, like Machine Knitting, and place your sewing project there. Use the free text box for your notes. I think as long as you also post knitting or crochet projects they don’t mind.
Nice summary of it! There is a free pattern review membership, but you’re right that it’s built on really old technology.
I think the other problem is that these other models are worried about branding. What I like about Ravelry is that, I am the brand. Ravelry is what *I* make it. I’m also not bombarded with advertising either. I love that there are no keyword/Ad Sense type of ads that show me adverts based on browsing keywords.
Clunky or outdated interface is another problem. I used to be active on Craftster until I found Ravelry. Craftster’s lay out is stuck in an odd late 90s/early 00s phase. And honestly, the high snark to actual helpful answer ratio is way too high for my tastes.
I’ve been wondering this too.
I suspect the right people have not yet taken control of/built a sewing site that is flexible enough.
These type of sites are very, very different from your standard retail, or even special interest site, and have to have the flexibility built into them from the beginning. They probably require skill sets from their designers/programmers that are difficult to come by.
Having watched my hubby work on the website for one of our biggest Fabric retailers here in Australia, (which due to our population, is admittedly not as big as an American one) I know that there are just so many categories that have to be considered when it comes to fabric, haberdashery, notions, tools, patterns, etc. Then add colour/surface design choices, sizing etc. to those already complex categories. Structuring that information in a sensible, hierarchical way is crazy complex. and takes real dedication from the client and designers/programmers to get it right.
How do we find a Ruby on Rails programmer as multi-talented as Casey, who would be interested enough in sewing, and the sewing community? …not to mention as invested as Casey and Jess are in Ravelry. A rare pair, indeed!
Abby, I had this EXACT discussion with a friend this week as she showed me the amazment of Ravelry. I was dumbfounded. I think some parts would be difficult to transfer to a sewing site (like documenting a fabric stash) but so much of it would be so totally awesome.
If there was a site I would use it. I agree it has to be the right sort of site and Ravelry is the best model I have seen. Whilst there are some sewers who only do one type of thing, here in the UK there is not the dominance of quilting there seems to be in the states. I run a social monthly sewing/knitting/crochet group in my street, and they are all interested in a range of fiber arts and sewing.
Ravelry is incredible. I’ve gotten help with patterns within minutes in the forums when I’d normally have had to wait until a yarn store opened.
I would love for a similar sewing site. I’m sad to hear someone say that the Craftster community is not as supportive now, because it used to be incredible, although I agree that the layout hasn’t been kept up to date.
I thought that the Sewing Circle is made by the same people that run Ravelry, but it just hasn’t caught on.
Abby I think you should do it! Ok, maybe when the girls are in college. But seriously, it’ll take someone like you to get it going with all the right elements to make it work.
Bits and pieces is a great way to describe things as they stand now, Rachel. I think there’s a great opportunity here.
Yes, I saw that there was a free version as well, but the fact that there’s a paid tier is by nature divisive. No everyone has an equal footing to be a part of the community. The site looks old and it doesn’t work in a responsive, interconnected way. I think this is a go great or go home sort of situation.
I love that you feel that you are the brand, Vanessa. That truly speaks to the nature of the Ravelry community.
I think you’ve really hit the nail on the head here, Claire. Ravelry is a complicated site. Like award-winning complicated. In order for savvy sewists to flock to a similar community it needs to really be great. That takes dedication, vision and skill. I do feel confident that it can happen, though!
Let’s keep looking, Lynn!
Yep, difficult for sure, but not impossible. None of the reasons people came up with for why this kind of site doesn’t exist yet are show stoppers.
That’s interesting, Jane. I think this sort of divisiveness is kinda silly. We all sew. Let’s get on with it!
I was a Crafster user back in 2004 and found it pretty frustrating even then.
MySewingCircle is not made by the same people who created Raverly. And I agree that it hasn’t caught on. The science behind what makes things catch on is pretty fascinating, but that’s a topic for a different post.
Well, I don’t think I’m the one to make it happen, but I do think there’s a great opportunity out there for some creative, motivated, and skillful people to tackle this project.
I wonder if Craftsy is fitting the bill for that need right now. I see awesome discussions and interactions going on in the classrooms, and in comments on projects and patterns. For instance, this random project I grabbed the link to was saved (kinda like a bookmark) by 1700+ with 230+ comments – ow.ly/n3dia I’m sure there are better examples, but like I said, I just randomly grabbed one.
Much like Ravelry, the projects link to the original pattern, and if the pattern has a page at Craftsy, you can view all the projects that folks have made with that pattern, and comments relative to each.
I can “follow” other folks, and see what they are making and posting.
Also, Craftsy doesn’t charge to list and sell patterns. See http://www.craftsy.com/blog/patterns-faq/#Pattern_fee
No affiliation, just a happy Craftsy user. 🙂
Question. Is it better to have a large crafting community that encompasses all areas of crafting (knitting, sewing, etc) or to have separate communities for each? It seems like a lot of effort to switch between communities and keep separate established profiles.
I hadnt thought of Craftsy as a community like Ravelry, but youre right that some of this sort of interaction is happening there. Craftsy just partnered with JoAnns and Im hopeful that the user base will grow even larger. Obviously it isnt just about sewing, but perhaps sewists can find a home community there.
You ask a really great question, Sherrie, and Im not sure of the answer. My hunch is that the market for fiber arts is significantly different than the market for sewing and that we have different needs, but perhaps Im wrong there? Id be curious to hear what other people think of your question.
I’ll be sure to jump back if anyone throws in their $0.02. 🙂
I study communities all the time and the crafting space definitely has my attention right now so I’m pretty genuinely curious.
TypePad seems to like to boot me out rather than post my responses …
I’ll stay tuned to hear if anyone else has their $0.02 on this. I study communities all the time and am pretty zoned in on the crafting realm right now so am genuinely curious.
Funny you should post this today, when a sewing site that was described to me as “the Ravelry for sewing” was just launched today! http://thesewingstash.com I suppose only time will tell if it will gain the popularity of Ravelry.
I would love a site like Ravelry for sewing!! Maybe you’ll inspire someone to get one going.
Now that would be nice!
It seems like there are so many attempts. Clearly its an idea that people are thinking about. Ill be interested to watch how things develop over the next few years.
Man! Ravelry sounds awesome! Yes, we need this! Please do this. I love Sew Mama Sew but find it a little clunky right now. Kollabora doesn’t seem a community-sprit minded.
I hope someone does. Im afraid it wont be me, but this is surely an opportunity for the right person, or team, to tackle. Those lucky yarn people!! We need in on the action.
I am with you! I pondering that too! I am a Ravelry fan and I’m on pattern review and a couple of others but never found one as perfect for sewing as Ravelry is for knitters. The trick is in the simplicity, make it simple, practical and functional, with an accaptivant appeal and easy to brows. The pattern archive have to be standards for each pattern and not a mess. Say well, Casey and Jess has the vision and skills to develope a perfect and so well loved site and community.
Ravelry works like a dream. I don’t knit or crochet that much, but I browse often in Ravelry and buy a lot of patterns on an impulse, just because it is so easy!
Have you approached the makers of Ravely with this matter? They seem the people to do it and do it well. A similar site for sewers seems like a sure recipe for success.
I have wondered about the same question, am an active Ravelry user and knit more and more whereas I sew less and less. R. is a great source for inspiration. I miss something similar for sewing and disagree on all reasons against a sewing site that you found (maybe apart from the printing issue, but that surely could be solved, also). Hopefully there will be a well working solution in the future, I would participate gladly.
Hello! My name is Deana and I have wondered the same thing. I actually just launched my site the Sewing Stash last Wednesday and the goal of my site is to be the “Ravelry” for sewers. I have created what I believe to be an easy to use format that includes a pattern/tutorial search engine that anyone can contribute to free of charge. It’s also free to search it. There is a fabric section and blog tat are currently up and running. In the next few weeks that last 2 sections of the site will be launching as well Community and a library. The community will be set up similarly to Ravelry.
I want to create a simple to use community for sewers. Please feel free to check it out. http://www.thesewingstash.com . There is currently a giveaway running to celebrate launch day.
Hi Andrea,
The Sewing Stash is my site and I am hoping it gains popularity too as when I designed it my vision was exactly that – a Ravelry for sewists. Hopefully it will find the same popularity!
I’ve thought this exact same thing since Ravelry first came out. Maybe someone will come up with the perfect site that’s easy to use. Whenever there’s a swap on flickr then we get the social interaction there for the swap duration but nothing centralized.
Deana, congrats on the new site, I need to go check it out. I’m guessing reading a post like this, and the comments, which spell out alot of what makes Ravellry great (minimal commercialisim, the strong sense of community, etc…) gives you some fabulous market research to go on!
I too, think Craftsy is closer to what we are describing than the others mentioned here. Yes, they charge for classes, but much is free.
Hi Melissa,
Would love to understand what you mean by “Kollabora doesn’t seem a community-sprit minded”. We had in mind to build a site the helps others to start making or to improve skills and to find like-minded people.
Let me know what you wish for. Feel free to email me nora at kollabora dot com.
I’m a passionate crafter, I learned to crochet and knit in 2nd grade, taught myself to sew as a teenager and learned all kinds of crafty skills from silkscreen to woodworking from my parents. I was longing for a plattform that let’s me explore these hobbies, learn new ones, and find inspiration from others.
We’re at the very beginning with Kollabora. We’ll be releasing in a few weeks a resource tool that will be very helpful for all crafters. So I hope you either check back or sign up for the newsletter (which will inform you about that).
Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
Best,
Nora
http://www.kollabora.com/
I am a knitter who learned about ravelry just a year ago, and your right it ruins all other knitting sites for me:-) . I recently started sewing again and my first thought was is their a page like ravelry for sewing? In researching that I came across your blog- I will check out some of the sites you mentioned, but also wanted to post so that if there is a talented programmer out there researching this they would find there are a lot of us who would be interested in participating on that kind of site!
Has anyone considered asking Casey and Jess if they would expand Ravelry to include sewing?? I think it would be easier to add that than to create an entirely new site? I wouldn’t be surprised if most knitters/crocheters dabbled in sewing as well
A very interesting post! Like Min, I knit and sew, but haven’t done any sewing for a couple of years. I’ve just been inspired to go back to my sewing machine by the Great British Sewing Bee and my first thought was – I wonder if there’s a Ravelry for sewing yet?! Which is how I found your blog…
In the past I have found PatternReview really useful but as others have said, it’s so awful to navigate and use, particularly when you’re used to Ravelry… It’s such a shame as I find it soooo inspiring to see what others have done, the changes they’ve made, how different garments look on different shapes and sizes etc. I think there’s a huge potential for a community site for sewing.
I am off now to investigate some of the options above, but I do wonder whether somehow getting Casey and Jess involved would be the best idea – if we’re trying to replicate what they’ve done so well already! I think that they’re kept pretty busy keeping Ravelry the most awesome site on the web though 🙂
You know, I’m sure it’s been suggested to them. I think that Ravelry hit at a good time, when the web was still new for many people. They were able to bring it all together in one place, something I think would be really challenging now no matter how good the platform. It’s interesting to think about!
Why oh why indeed. We have a wonderful website at Stitcher’s Guild (www.artisanssquare.com) but while we have the forums and posts we lack the database functionality that makes Ravelry *so* awesome. If only they would expand to sewing!
I didn’t know your site existed. I will check it out. These things take time and im sure Ravelry wasn’t this big when they first started out. Good luck with your sewing site I hope it is a huge success story for you. Off to check your site out……… Sue
I enjoy all avenues when it comes to sewing. I quilt, I knit, I sew, I crochet and many others. I find that Ravelry is such a valuable resource. I wish that I could find a site that would be for those of us that also use fabric. I would love to have a place I can ask questions and find answers and help others with the things I know.
Here’s one more person who jumped onto the bandwagon of building a sewing database/stash site after reading this post. 🙂 I’m building a pattern database + pattern/fabric stash around dressmaking.
Time will tell whether I have the skills and dedication to make it work, but so far it’s a lot of fun building things. I’m only a beginner at sewing – but I do have learned a good deal about web development in the last half year while working on the site.
I have to agree with what Claire said earlier, the difficulty is in the details.. there’s a lot of little details that would be interesting when browsing for sewing patterns / fabrics. Capturing pattern sizes alone in a proper way is a pretty complex topic. Understanding and arranging all these in a way that it’s not totally confusing and complex is the challenge. But that’s not much different to what Ravelry’s founders faced when they started – they had to understand the yarn world and properly represent things in the database just the same.
If someone reading this would like to follow along and check in occasionally on the progress as I continue to build the site over the next months, I’d be happy to have you. 🙂 The people that are on this journey with me so far have been and continue to be incredibly helpful. You can reach me through my blog or at https://kaava.net
Hi,
Lori, i thought along your line
just lay them on top of each other – would not have quite the effect of the roll, but beats putting the snaps on and when you are in a hurry there is no need to unsnap them;
i love the idea of unpaper towels though!!!!
No reason at all not to have a sewing site like Ravelry. A geeky type can take this on but, I believe, they would need to have a server and a lot of spare time to devote to building and maintaining such a site. Behind the curtains of Ravelry is a great deal of thought and time in addition to a hardware investment.
I’m trying to make just such a thing happen. I have the time and know how, but it won’t work without the support 🙂
There is a sewing community website though! It’s called pattern review! It has over 390,000 members!
sewing.patternreview.com
Yes, PatternReview is a sewing community website and it’s a terrific resource. It doesn’t have the same community and library features as Ravelry, though.
There’s a Ravelry for gardeners called MyFolia (Folia for short) which is another fantastic example that such databases and communities can be created, but from the ground up (so to speak), by gardeners and knitters themselves. I don’t think that non-enthusiasts can really grasp the intimacies and intricacies of these more-than-hobbies well enough to serve them. That’s the beauty of Ravelry and Folia – the developers are enthusiasts first and web experts second.
I’d never heard of Folia! Thank you!
Hang in there folks, we’re making a break for it! (We = me, a sewist who used to work as a project manager and documentation writer in web development, and my spouse Bruno who’s an amazing web developer!) We still have some kinks to work out, but there’s a working site in progress – you can see a little demo on this Instagram video: https://instagram.com/p/6gCKPCnf__/
Social media links and an email signup are here on our placeholder splash page if you want to follow along and make sure you don’t miss any announcements. http://www.textillia.com/
High hopes we might be able to open things up as a “beta” version in a month or maybe two at most…we’re working around Bruno’s paid contracts and me being sick as a dog (we’re not backed by any big companies, it’s just us two!), but we are really serious about this. 🙂
I just was thinking this question this morning, so I found your two-year-old post. I’m an avid Ravelry user, and I would love to a see a “Sewelry.”
Please keep us updated.
I am also an avid Ravelry user. I keep watching this forum and a couple of sewing sites have been mentioned but they just aren’t enough like Ravelry to be interesting or useful to me. So, I’m with you wishing for a ‘Sewelry’! They did Ravelry right!!!
Hey Nina and Billie –
I just thought I should reply and say I TOTALLY feel you on wanting a site that is just like Ravelry. I used to knit avidly until hand pain stopped me and I started sewing more, and I feel the same!
But let me assure you, that’s why we’re building it – Textillia is going to be VERY much like Ravelry! I wrote a little info in the comment above yours, but it’s modelled strongly off Ravelry because what they did is so right!
We’re aiming to start a staged launch at the end of the month so you won’t have to wait much longer. 🙂
Wonderful. I have a background in IT project mgmt. and administration including testing software. and reviewing documentation I have been sewing for 55 years, since I was in 4H. I also knit, weave, spin, dye, etc. I recently scanned my (very large) pattern collection and put it on OneNote. Soooo, if you want volunteer testers I would be very interested.
Thanks,
Billie
Hey Billie, that could be MY resume, minus 4H (I wish!) plus a couple decades!
We were going to have a formal testing period, but we’ve decided to scrap it so that we can get everyone on the site sooner building up the database of fabric and patterns… We’re basically doing an early beta launch, and then going to keep the site in active development for the foreseeable future.
The plan is to let people on in batches as we scale up and make sure the server stays stable, but people on the mailing list will have first dibs on registering, so if you want to get on there early do sign up!
Glad to know we’ll have some keen eyes in the community, who can send well documented bug reports in. 😉 See you on there soon!
Hello everyone,
We have just launched a social network just for sewists – http://www.Sewist.com
There are forums, projects, groups, stash, and pattern database , and it’s totally free and unbiased 🙂
We shall shortly be launching stores, jobs and an online designing tool as well.
Books an magazines are already in the database and we shall be making the lists live shortly.
Hope you like it! There’s a special group on the website where you can post comments and request features 🙂
Natalia
Whoo hoo! Congrats!
I’m not a knitter and haven’t been to Ravelry, but from the article and the comments it sounds like it’s the standard to hit. So…has it occurred to anyone to approach the owners of Ravelry and ask them about adding a sewing and fabric sector to their community?
Take a look at Sewist.com It is a new site trying to be like Ravelry. I think sewing is a bit more difficult for a Ravelry-like site but they are trying. I don’t see many people using it yet though.
Terry – The owners of Ravelry have been asked about this, and have openly said that they want to stay focused on knitting, crochet, weaving, and spinning, and do not plan to expand into sewing. Understandable decision since there’s already so much going on there, and fabric really does require a whole different structure.
Our Beta period is going strong over on Textillia for anyone who is still looking for a home for their sewing projects! We’re adding new functionality to the site every month – the forums are still a bit quiet, but the pattern database is already huge, and the fabrics database is growing. People have been posting tons of their sewing and quilting projects, so it’s great to see it’s working, and we’re getting good feedback about what else is needed!
You can read more about our plans for Textillia on our About page: http://www.textillia.com/about and there’s lots of screenshots of the site on our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/textillia/ if you want to get an idea of what it’s like, since like Ravelry you have to log in to use the site.
I know there was me, and one other person. Unfortunately on my end, my husband is now way too busy to work on the project, not sure how far the other person’s project got.
One of your links – https://www.threadbias.com/ – comes up with the message “The threadbias community has closed”.
Thanks for this article. I’d love to see a sewing/quilting version of Ravelry.
Yes, it closed.
Check out Textillia or The Foldline.
I’m finding this article a couple of years later and have been wondering the same thing. I am a Ruby on Rails developer and would LOVE to code something like this!
I just found you now while looking for the millionth time for a pattern database I could use.
Sure, a Ravelry-like site for sewers would be nice but I dream of digitizing my pattern and maybe my fabric collection without having to input all the data manually. That would take the rest of my life! It would work like Collectorz.com: you input the pattern number and company and you immediately get the pattern details from an existing online database of all patterns. You can do this now to digitize your book collection or your DVD collection for example. And once, you could do it for patterns. But the database disappeared with the site, so long ago that I can’t remember the site’s name. Where did it go? Why did it go?
What I would like to know is the answer to the last question. Is there a copyright issue with the pattern companies? If so, how antiquated would that be? And if the Vogue, Butterick, McCall, Simplicity etc. feel so possessive about this data, why don’t they make the information available online to their sewing clients? Either they do it or, at least let someone else do it.
I don’t think it’s a copyright issue. Rather it’s just that creating this kind of database is a huge job and would therefore need to be user generated (the way Ravelry is). When you say there used to be one, what were you referring to? Perhaps Pattern Review? That’s the closest we have.
Just for Information (FYI)
If you are on Facebook there is a group called Craft sale! Sell your Homemade Here! The purpose of the group is for advertising items that are homemade. They encourage sellers to refer buyers to another site to see what sellers have. Their about statement is:
Sell your crafts here and advertise your hand made for others to discover your talent. Feel free to ask questions and start discussions to grow your business. DO NOT SHARE YOUR FACEBOOK GROUP HERE.
I sell my homemade items on Ebay. The two additional groups that can be included in showing items are Marketplace, and a garage sale group near to where I live (which I do not include myself).
I know this is an old post… but I’m still not impressed with the options out there.
And right now I’m drawing up a plan to make a Ravelry for sewers. I’ve been a huge Ravelry fan for YEARS, even used it for my business (that I had to give up upon moving to the UK because the water has been awful for dyeing yarn to my standards) I’m in the process of becoming a fabric designer to do Custom fabrics. There is no good community for that, and it was giving me extreme anxiety. I literally kept saying “I need the safety that was Ravelry to make this work!”
So I’m getting off my arse, and trying to figure out how to make it happen. Literally in the process of drawing up plans. Fabric stash cataloging is definitely a priority for me! And I’ve got a really good idea how to work with the Custom Fabric designers (we need a better name… Indie Dyer was such a great title, custom fabric designers need a better moniker) to make it really easy for customers to log their fabric. (If I get my way, literally just scan it with your phone and it will auto stash it for you.)
So don’t give up hope. I have plans. And my number 1 rule is that “It needs to be as amazing as Ravelry.”
Somehow, I’m going to make this happen, even if I have to learn Ruby and Perl myself!
I’m thrilled.
I have just finished my apprentices and my exams a couple of days ago, and I’m searching for a brilliant site like Ravelry for sewers of all levels.
Good luck!
Old post, but came across it since making an exit from ravelry after their stupidity/choices earlier this year. Regarding sewing spots -have any of you tried http://www.mysewingcircle.com I use it, found it a few years ago. It is a great way to catalog your patterns -and they don’t have to be garment sewing patterns. You can catalog about anything. Also, for just private use, Evernote is good.
my 2 cents, jbsews