What a LONG time coming this particular blog post has been!!! I expected to have this out and written probably 6 months ago (or more) and yet, things take time and I needed to practice patience. Always. I always need to practice patience since I'm, admittedly, not great at it.
It has been a full year in the making now, but I can finally announce that I am opening up my own PDF pattern store! This is been quite the journey with a lot of varying emotions as I've had to become versed in all sorts of different skills. Too many that have nothing to do with actually making a pattern, but are necessary to run a website and make logos and create tutorials and edit pictures and ... and... and Let's just say this has been a year of learning curves and I'm not done yet.
The journey to find my "thing" in the sewing world has been a lot longer than one year, but I can say that my turn to compete on Project Run and Play in fall of 2017 was the event that triggered this venture. It was like I finally found the part of sewing that intrigued me enough to create a business. People often suggested to me that should open up an Etsy store and sell my creations, but I always knew that wouldn't work. I would likely end up not enjoying what I was doing and it would fizzle out fast. I needed something that would take my love of sewing and not ruin it! Does that make sense?
But I'm not alone! I have Trish!
Those who have been with me in the journey will know that I have a sewing buddy just down the street. And without really meaning to, I tend to lure her into my sewing fun. This will be our biggest endeavour for sure. Trish and I have spent countless hours pouring over books and blogs and classes and math. Ugh, math. I'm so thankful to have someone around that loves math! (That's Trish, obviously.) We've been able to bounce ideas off of each other as well as bring each of our strengths together and we feel that, though we still have a lot of learning ahead of us, we are very excited with what we have for all of you at this point. To say we're nervous, is an understatement, but it's excited nervous.
Along with Trish and I, we have had the distinct pleasure of working together with a group of testers that we still can't quite believe we have found! This group of women has willingly and whole-heartedly taken on the task of helping us work out details on how to start the company. We recognize that this is not typical tester work and we hope they really hear us when we thank them. They have been cheering us on and giving us a boat load of encouragement over the last couple months. We wanted to create an environment of friendship and I honestly believe that has started. Keep your eyes open for their names and pictures in our tutorials, on the website and wherever they choose to share. We encourage you to support them as well!
At the time of posting this, it will be one week until we launch Sofiona Designs. We still have a lot to do in the coming week! Over the next few days we're going to share a little more about our business and what we have chosen to take a stand for that has nothing to do with sewing, but everything to do with our business. And then come the peeks! I can hardly wait for you to see the creations that our testers (and we) have made. Stay tuned!!!
