Dear Block Partiers,

I must interrupt your rigorous mood boarding for a special announcement. We’ve got a FANTASTIC addition to our Block Party in the form of the cutest and most perfect Pxl Rose Block! It was designed by the wonderful Anna, AKA specifically for Block Party. She is generously offering it for free to all her subscribers on Substack during the Block Party Sew Along. Hop over and download it!

Subscribe & Get the Block Here

I sewed one up right when the block pattern was released and was able to knock it out with very few scraps in about an hour. It was such a satisfying sew, and Anna’s directions are great (make sure you follow her instructions on which way to press your seams)! Even if you don’t plan to use the block in your Block Party creation (how dare you), I’d recommend sewing one up during our block swatching week to practice traditional cutting & construction. Who knows, you might be convinced to pop a pixl rose or two in your design after all!

Materials week with all the details on fabrics & tools will be posted this Sunday. I wish you all some delicious mood boarding until then.

xx

Sadie

PS: If at least one person doesn’t use the Pixl Rose Block for their pockets, I will be heartbroken. You’ve been warned.

We have a lot to cover this week, but don’t let that scare you! We’re going to start with the big picture and then zoom in on the nitty-gritty details. We’re taking this step by step and have the whole month of November to scheme, flip-flop, and dilly dally.

First Topic: Inspo & Colors

First, let’s take a look at our existing closets. I’m assuming most of you will be sewing a coat, although I will include a pant pattern suggestion, too. You are also welcome to apply this sew-along to any quilted garment pattern you and your closet desire!

Ask yourself a couple of questions:

1. What do I wear and love?

2. What garment details speak to me?

3. What colors do I reach for?

4. What goes with things I already have?

Once you’ve done a closet inventory, look at your saves (Pinterest, Instagram, screenshots, etc.) to see what has inspired you that you may have forgotten about. Luckily, we have last year’s sew-along to drool over, too. Use #HurryHomexRue on Instagram to check out the gorgeous quilt coats from last year. As mentioned previously, during Block Party you will have a library of block suggestions and a layout grid to help you design. You will have all the tools to sew HurryHomexRue if that is a design that catches your inspiration.

Bethany Lynne, from Bethany Lynne Makes wrote a blog about making her beautiful HurryHomexRue with lots of useful details from last year’s sew-along. You can read it here. Linli from Lamb and Loom Fabrics also wrote a very useful blog post specifically about how to choose fabric for quilt coats. Lamb and Loom is a modern online fabric shop offering curated bundles, quilt kits, indie patterns, and designer prints for quilters and sewists. Read her quilt coat guide here.

You can also check out #SWSRue on Instagram for more inspiration. I absolutely love Caroline’s scrap 9-patch Rue featured on the Love to Sew Podcast Episode 306. This would be the perfect pattern/block combo for a first quilted garment.

If you are ready to see some pure artistic genius, check out Elizabeth’s (AKA WeirdBirds on Instagram) Rue Coats. She’s made so many truly inspired Rues and had fun hacking the collar and adjusting ease/length, which are such easy ways to alter Rue with big impact.

Want to see these bad boys on video? BAM! Coat 1 Coat 2 Coat 3

Another Rue that lives in my mind rent-free is Maya’s lovely buttery geometric masterpiece!

You can find her on Instagram @hemelbreker to see more of her gorgeous work. Although Block Party won’t provide the tools & information to create Elizabeth and Maya’s Rues, I hope you find them inspiring and stimulating for just how far your own creativity can take you during these next 12 weeks.

Stuck on colors?

I highly recommend this Maker Color Palette Exercise YouTube video (27 min long) by @BreathingYarn to help you find a color scheme that works well in your closet. It will apply to more than this project and is a fun exercise to do every so often to see how your color taste evolves.

Next, make a visual brainstorm of any color combos or images that inspire you. Here is my quilt Pinterest board and my Color Combo board to use as a jumping-off point. Pin, screenshot, or doodle with abandon over a couple of days and then revisit to see if you can spot trends. Shop your screenshots & saves. Go for walks and notice colors that grab your eye. One of my personal favorite quilt inspo sources is vintage tiles, interiors, and art history. Look everywhere; who knows what will spark for you!

Once I have a couple of color combo contenders, I start to imagine the different outfits I can make using garments I already own, coordinated with each of my potential color combos. There are lots of colors I like in theory and much fewer I’ll actually wear. We’ll source fabric next week, but keeping a couple of color combo options in the mix can be helpful in case you can’t find that perfect shade in fabric form that makes the whole combo work.

Nitty Gritty Details

Now that you’ve done a personal closet inventory and reviewed some inspo, let me introduce the designs we’re working with this year!

As mentioned in the welcome post, we will be working with a 4.5” by 4.5” (finished block) grid. This is the perfect scale for quilted garments because it is small enough to fit a satisfying amount of blocks and not too small that it sucks all the joy out of piecing. All of the recommended blocks except the 9-patch are available as foundation paper piecing patterns.

Foundation paper piecing can be a bit of a brain bender if you’ve never tried it, but once you do, it’s a really cool, fun sewing skill to add to your toolbox. To FPP, you sew fabric to a numbered paper template as a guide and an anchor. After completing the block, you tear off the paper and sew blocks together as usual. Using FPP allows you to sew sharper, smaller, and more complex blocks than traditional piecing, which lends itself well to quilted garments. You will need access to a printer to print the paper templates for your blocks.

You do not have to FPP, though! Both the 9-patch and Hurry Home blocks can be traditionally pieced. If this is your first quilted garment, consider sticking with a 9-patch block with just a couple accent blocks sprinkled throughout. Or no accent blocks if you wish. A full 9-patch garment is very cool and beautiful; check out Caroline’s 9-patch above or check out @Juliasmaking 9-patch Rue below.

If you’re in the mood to push yourself or do something extra cool, I encourage you all to give FPP letters a try! I have two alphabets available that can be printed at the correct scale and easily inserted into our design grid. Echo Alphabet is inspired by traditional quilt lettering and protest, and each letter is 4.5” x 4.5” square when printed at 150%. The SWS Alphabet is a western-style font 4.5” tall at 150%, but with varying widths for each letter and much thinner than the 4.5” block width. Read all about the design inspo for each alphabet here. Echo is easier to sew, but SWS allows you to fit more letters on your coat. I love the idea of an FPP monogram or phrase on a quilted garment and hope many of you go this route. Here is one of my personal favorite examples using the SWS Alphabet pattern from @containsdoghair on Instagram.

I’ll be using FPP lettering in my Block Party quilt coat. I am referencing bomber and letterman style jackets to inspire my letter placement. Here are some of the images I’m using for inspo, feel free to use them as well!

But where do you get the Block Party Block Library?

Here! This pay-what-you-can ($0-$15) Block Library includes FPP patterns for the bonus blocks from both of my FPP alphabets (Sawtooth Star, Shoofly, Sun Ray, and Hurry Home), the Sparrow Block (only available in the Block Library), and a fully illustrated tutorial for how to batch sew 9-patch blocks 20 at a time. The Block Library does not come with FPP instructions, so if you need an illustrated tutorial to learn the technique, purchase one of the SWS FPP Alphabet patterns. You can also find online video tutorials explaining the FPP technique if you prefer.

If you want to sew the Hurry Home Block with the traditional piecing method, you can purchase the Hurry Home pattern, which includes step-by-step illustrated instructions and a cut list. The pattern also includes printable paper templates to cut your pieces if you decide to sew scrappy Hurry Home blocks.

We won’t purchase patterns/materials until week 2, but if you are itching to dive in, use “BlockParty26” at checkout for 20% off SWS quilt-related patterns, including Rue.

Print and use these design pages to start to play with block layouts. I encourage you to bust out the colored pencils to explore color too!

Block Party Design Pages

126KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Patterns

Let’s talk patterns! The information I will share week by week will be geared toward my own pattern, Rue Quilt Coat. If you already have a Rue, I promise a second, third, or even fourth will be just as good. If you don’t have Rue yet, use “BlockParty26” at checkout for 20% off.

If Rue doesn’t spark for you, no worries! I’ve teamed up with some of my favorite sister shops to offer discounts on some other TNT quilted patterns.

• Flora Jacket: “HurryHomeFlora” for 25% off the Flora Jacket & Vest Pattern at Brightside Fabric Co for November 2026.

• Kite Pants: “SWSBLOCKPARTY” for 20% off on the Kite Pants Pattern 11/1/2026 until 11/15/2026 at Matchy Matchy Sewing Club

• Joni Jacket: “SEWALONGJONI50” for 50% off the Joni pattern at SmallMuseum.com for November 2026.

• Moving Coat: All Beaton Linen patterns are currently 50% off at BeatonLinen.com.

Whatever you choose, I highly recommend going with a pattern written for quilted fabric. The seam finishes, ease, design, and techniques are particular when working with quilted fabric. You want a pattern that has been developed and tested with these in mind since you will already be doing all kinds of mental gymnastics to design your block layout.

A0 Pattern Printing

The wonderful Bolt Fabric in Portland is offering up to two free pages of A0 printing for Block Partiers with the code “SWSBLOCKPARTYPRINTING!” at checkout! You can choose local pickup or pay shipping within the US.

My very own sewing stomping ground, Studio Sessions in Berkeley, California, is also offering 20% off printing any SWS pattern during November for local pickup only. Follow the directions here and include “blockparty26” in your email.

Homework

Use the information provided in this post to brainstorm and make some block & pattern decisions. Next week we will focus on sourcing and purchasing fabric, tools, and notions for our coats. I’ll be partnering with fabric stores to offer discounts to Block Party participants in the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia. Apologies to all you sew along-ers outside these locations!

Next week’s post will include an updated layout suggestion & yardage estimate for the HurryHomexRue block design. I will also provide some soft yardage estimates for other designs, but since Block Party designs are open-ended, they won’t be exact for your project and may require a bit of brainpower to customize to your needs.

Please share, comment and tag me in your progress; I can’t wait to see!

Do you guys remember Shrek the Sheep? I do. I think about him often. Probably every time I think about wool, which is admittedly a lot these days, thanks to my budding knitting and unabashed obsession with wool batting.

In this post, I humbly hope to convert you all to die-hard wool batting fans, or at the very least, curious enough to give it a try.

I’ve sewn both quilts and quilted garments with a variety of batting materials and can confidently say wool is my favorite batting. I will choose it over any other material again and again for every project. I love it so much that since my longarmer doesn’t carry wool batting, I buy wool batting online and have it shipped to her for my quilts. The other common batting options are cotton, bamboo, a cotton/polyester blend, or polyester. All do the job just fine, but in my opinion, none come close to the wonderful texture and properties of wool.

The more you learn about wool, the more you realise what an amazing fiber it is. It’s a naturally occurring renewable resource that is simultaneously durable and biodegradable, keeps you warm in cold weather and cool in hot weather, wicks moisture, and resists stains/odors/fire/UV rays.

The two main reasons I love wool batting for quilts and quilted garments are:

1. It’s a natural fiber with excellent temperature-regulating properties.

2. The loft & structure of wool batting is unmatched.

Let’s talk about quilted garments first.

If you are planning to sew a Rue or other quilt coat, and you want a lovely, squishy yet sturdy, and nicely shaped garment, go with wool. You could use poly batting for a similar visual effect, but it’s worse for the environment and will likely make you sweat. It’s also less fun to quilt through poly batting than wool, if the sewing experience matters to you. Cotton and bamboo batting will always have a soft hand & drape, which some people prefer. To me, cotton or bamboo batting always makes quilted garments look a bit flat and floppy, which is not generally what I hope for with a coat, but could be an intentional choice for a quilted pant. I’ve seen people double up layers of cotton or bamboo batting, which does give a garment a bit more structure and thickness, but doubles the batting consumption and still misses that wonderful squishy loft wool or poly has.

When I suggest wool batting, people are often concerned that it will be too warm for frequent use. I live in the Bay Area in Northern California, and the temperature generally hovers around 60-70 (16-21 C) degrees all year. I wear my wool quilt coats constantly. I never find them to be much warmer than my other jackets on sunny days, and they do an excellent job of keeping me nice and toasty on colder days. My poly quilt coat is often too warm and makes me sweaty. My cotton coats are a good wind barrier, but they don’t provide much warmth on their own unless I’m wearing a warm sweater layer underneath.

Wool for quilts

I didn’t know about wool batting until I started to design the Rue Coat and dove deep into all the possibilities available. I’ve sewn around 15 quilts in my life so far, 6 I’ve kept, and the rest have been baby gifts. Only the last 3 quilts I sewed have wool batting, and I’ve kept all 3. I have a 4th cotton batting house quilt in the rotation, and it’s the one I’d save last in a fire even though I love the design of the quilt top.

All of the quilts in my home get daily use, and with three kids and a dog, I can assure you they are well-loved utility items. Moving forward, I will only use wool batting for my quilts for a number of reasons. Firstly, the loft in wool batting makes the quilting lines lovely and pronounced, even after lots of wear and washes. It highlights the quilting design more than other batting, which adds extra texture and another design detail to the overall beauty of the quilt. Especially if you are spending the money to have your quilt longarmed and want the pantograph to shine, consider choosing wool. This is anecdotal, but I think I wash my cotton batting couch quilt more than my wool ones because they seem to collect house smells (ahem, mostly my quilt-obsessed dog stink) more than my quilts with wool batting.

Washing Wool Batting

Previously, I had the same misconceptions many people do about wool being a difficult fiber to maintain. Now I’ve taken the time to learn and live with wool, I’ve realized there are just some ground rules to live by and the rest is actually fairly low maintenance.

Upon some light research, I discovered that wool used for batting is usually scoured and super washed. If you are a fiber artist, you already know what that means. For us unenlightened folk, it simply means that the wool is prewashed and chemically or physically coated to prevent wool from felting when being washed in hot temps. Since wool is hair, it has microscopic scales just like the hair from our bodies does. Those scales can interlock when subjected to heat and agitation and turn into felted wool. This can be an amazing property, but definitely not what we want our batting to do. To prevent this from happening, a physical or chemical coating is used to smooth those scales. Think of it like a SUPER conditioner. If you want to read more about this, here is an excellent article from Meridian Mill House. I throw my quilts in the washer and dryer on the normal settings I wash my other blankets on with no problem. So, when washing your quilts with wool batting, expect that usual beautiful post-wash crinkle, but don’t stress about your masterpiece coming out unrecognizable.

Cost

A final and very important consideration is the cost of each batting material. Wool is the most expensive batting option, but compared to the other natural fiber options, it is minimal ($4.50-$7.50 difference per batting unit). To me, a short one-time splurge of less than $10 is well worth all wool batting brings to the table. My favorite brand of wool batting is Quilters Dream, but I’ve also heard that Hobb’s heirloom is great too.

If I haven’t convinced you to give wool batting a try yet, there is no hope for you. But if I have convinced you to give it a try, I am thrilled for you and all that lies ahead on your quilting journey.

I heard you’re curious about the SWS Block Party…

I’m glad you’re here! I have the most fun quilting when I give myself a loose framework, strong inspiration, some bumpers, and a lot of freedom to make mistakes and play around. Eventually, I emerge on the other end of a project with something unique and imperfect but beloved. This year, I’ve tried to create a sew-along to provide a similar creative process for us to enjoy together. I hope this style of sew-along will encourage you to follow your intuition and let the process guide you. After all, quilting is alchemy; quilting is poetry. Try to constrain it too much, and you’ll miss all the magic.

So here is the plan: Over the next 12 weeks, I will guide you through the process of making a wearable textile collage so powerful your creative spirit will haunt it (lovingly or maliciously) for generations. AKA your very own custom pieced and quilted garment. In the realm of sew-alongs, imagine this as an open enrollment seminar. This sew-along will provide a creative framework, schedule, block library, pattern recommendations, and weekly posts to guide you through the ups and downs of a creative quilting practice. All levels of sewists are welcome!

Last year’s sew-along Hurry Home x Rue was a bit more specific and provided a suggested garment design using the Hurry Home Mini Block and Rue Coat patterns. This year, we will still be working in the 4.5”x 4.5” (finished) block scale (same as the Mini Hurry Home). Instead of providing a suggested layout, I am providing grid dimensions and a library of 4.5” by 4.5” blocks for you to design with (including letters!). You can make this as wacky or simple as your heart and piecing skills desire. We’ll review some options more in depth in week one. Since this project uses a mini block scale intended for garments, I recommend you give Foundation Paper Piecing a try! Stay tuned for official block announcements, but if you want to get a head start, you can check out:

SWS Alphabet, Hurry Home, Echo Alphabet

We won’t purchase patterns/materials until week 2, but if you are itching to dive in, use “BlockParty26” at checkout for 20% off SWS quilt-related patterns.

During the sew-along, I will post weekly with a to-do list for the week, resources, and links to help you on your way. The information in the posts will be geared towards the Rue Quilt Coat pattern, so if this is your first quilted garment or sew-along, I recommend using Rue as your pattern. If you don’t mind making some tweaks and educated guesses, you are welcome to follow along using any quilted garment pattern that strikes your fancy. I collaborated with some of my fav sister shops to offer you a discount on some other TNT quilted patterns in case you’re in the mood for something new. We will also have other exciting partnerships with my favorite small sewing businesses, so stay tuned! These will all be announced November 1st.

Here is the Block Party Schedule

Participating in the SWS Block Party is free!

Block Party posts will be posted every Sunday on Substack. You do not need to follow this timeline exactly, but it is really fun to work on a project in tandem with sewists around the world. During the sew-along, it is free to subscribe and participate. If you are able to subscribe for any amount of time at any amount, your support is greatly appreciated! Your contribution helps keep the sew-along free for everyone to access and allows me to keep the good times rolling over here at SWS headquarters <3. After the sew-along ends, posts will be archived and require a subscription to access the information.

Subscribe now

If you have questions, want to share your progress, or contribute to the SWS Block Party community, post a comment or join the chat on Substack! You can also share your progress on Instagram/TikTok, tag me, and use #SWSBlockParty.

If you plan to join, please complete this extremely short (4-question) Google Form so I can gauge how many participants to plan for.

Sign Up Here

I can’t wait to see what all you weirdos create!

Xoxo

Sadie aka Spaghetti Western Sewing

It’s GO time here in the Spaghetti Western Sewing Studio. July is the one month of the year I have consistent childcare for all three of my kids 10-4 Mon-Fri and no day job, which means I am trying to cram as much Spaghetti Western Sewing projects in as possible. Ideally, I’ll also squeeze in some personal projects, but I’m trying to get through this first weeks of July to see if I can settle my mind a bit before making myself any promises. Unfortunately, these first weeks are a lot of computer labor, which feels like a whole lot of nothing at the end of the day. But if I can just push through and check all those pesky tasks off my list, I’ll be set up and cruising for the rest of the month. Here is a brief rundown of what I hope to accomplish this month. I am sharing to hold myself accountable and laser-focused and because I know you’re nosey. Who doesn’t love a BTS?

Ornella Pattern Party

First task up is an Ornella Pattern Party! This is my first “Pattern Party”, which is my attempt to fill the utility void Instagram pattern #'s left and forge a new way to share and collect our sewing hive genius. I wrote more about the death of sewing #s, the dilemmas, alternatives, and possible solutions in this post. One of those solutions is for me to take on some of that community building and archiving as the pattern designer.

During the pattern party, we'll be celebrating one pattern all month long with discounts, community makes, Q&A, styling tips, and more. The more is all the stuff I haven’t thought of yet, but I’m sure will seep into my brain as we meander through this first pattern party together. I’m encouraging sewists to post & share their Ornellas with measurements (full bust, height & any other pertinent measurements), size, mods and fabric details and tag @spaghetti_western_sewing. All shares will be saved in a pattern highlight and entered to win prizes from SWS or one of our sister stores (deets coming!).

Rita Top & Dress

I believe I have FINALLY dialed in this baseball-inspired top & dress I’ve been toiling at for months! This was one of those classic ideas that popped into my head, and I thought I’d be able to knock it out in a month or two. Six months, 15 yards of muslin and 4 major re-designs later, I HOPE with every fiber we’re finally where we need to be. Part of my hero’s journey through this pattern was figuring out raglan sleeves, which was equal parts fun and befuddling. I’m finally happy with all three of my fit testers' toiles and have Rita out in open testing. So far it’s going well with just minor instruction edits for clarity. Testing will be on July 29th, and I usually take about a week to comb through all the feedback and make all the tweaks and updates before launch unless there is something huge. So keep your peepers peeled for early August!

Echo FPP Alphabet

This pattern will be released sometime in July! I just need to resew a couple of letters to take the pattern photos and finalize the two bonus block designs. It is much easier and less tedious than my other FPP Alphabet. I have a bunch of projects with both alphabets I’m itching to get started on.

CLO3D and Ramona Re-Release

I have been yearning for a structured learning environment in the pattern drafting world for a while now, and it seemed kismet when I stumbled across Slow Fashion Studio’s 12-week CLO3D course. Currently, I draft my patterns partially by hand and partially in Adobe Illustrator. It’s imperfect, but it works, and it’s what I’ve been doing for 4 years now. I’m only in week 5 of this course, but learning all the features of CLO3D has been so fun! I just love being bad at something new! I’m hoping that CLO3D will help me streamline some things and free up time and materials. Some of the utility tools make me want to cry from joy compared to the gymnastics I have to do in Adobe Illustrator. I’ve been wanting to revisit some of my older patterns to tweak, add views, and update, and I’m using this course to do just that. I’m starting with my first pattern, Ramona! I love Ramona and think it’s one of my most slept-on patterns. I’ll be adding a flat, no-gather yoke for all you high-neck haters out there. I’ve also wanted to draft a round yoke button-down shirt and another dress with different proportions. Not sure if these will be just for me or a pattern someday.

Personal Projects

Now, if I get through those, I have some personal projects I’d love to work on. I desperately need pants that fit for the new school year for me and my kids. I have some Helene Jeans for me and Enzo pants for my kids already cut and ready to sew up. I think I want to play around with custom embellishments for our pants. I have also been hoarding corduroy to make some utility suits for myself. I’ve been playing with a bunch of new quilt blocks I’d like to combine with FPP phrases. A friend abroad just had her first baby and chose THE CUTEST name. I can’t wait to stitch up. I want a pair of casual boxer bloomers for a river trip at the end of the month. I’m extremely slowly knitting up a sweater vest with some yarn I’ve been sitting on for literally years in a gorgeous chartreuse green. If I get that done, I hope to bust out an oversized red vest and perhaps a black or brown one for the fall, too.

That’s most of what’s going on behind the scenes over here in Spaghetti Land. What summer projects have you been up to?

Journal Ecosystems

Previously, I had only conceived of writing in one journal with one designated purpose or attempting to section one journal for multiple purposes. Typically, those journals were a variety of log/calendar-style systems and sketchbook journals. Both felt like chores to use, weren’t useful to me, and didn’t integrate with the types of activities I want to spend my time doing. Learning about a “journal ecosystem” opened so many more possibilities. It seemed to better reflect how my brain naturally operates and the world I want to create for myself.

In the simplest of terms, a journal ecosystem is a collection of small journals with specific themes and purposes in coordination with each other. I spent a lot of time on journal-Tok learning about all the ways people are assembling, decorating, and using their journal ecosystems. I love how flexible and personalized each person’s ecosystem is. Here are some of my favorite follows in this genre:

1. Wordlayout Tik Tok Instagram

2. Spiceycurry Tik Tok

3. Itskingowen Tik Tok

4. Dear.ray Tik Tok

5. Zilcrafts Tik Tok

6. Amycatriona Tik Tok

These are just some of the creative and generous people out there spreading the journal ecosystem gospel. I’ve found this corner of the internet to be so inspiring to dip a toe into and am delighted to stumble across any new journaling creators. If you have your own favorites, please share in the comments!

Supplies

As a disclaimer, you do not need to buy anything to create a journal ecosystem. Lots of the things I am about to post I already owned from past journaling attempts, and none of it is necessary. That being said, I did have a lot of fun assembling my ecosystem, and there are some definite nice-to-haves.

One nice-to-have I invested in is a Paper Republic Grand Voyageur, which is a leather journal cover and elastic band system to help hold and organize a small army of notebooks. Again, absolutely not necessary but very useful and motivating to use! I love this type of system because you can very easily pop in and rearrange any small notebook or booklet, which keeps it highly flexible and modular for wherever my journaling heart takes me. After lots of online research and pondering, I chose the pocket size in olive green with blue elastics to set up my portable journal ecosystem. After a little over a month of daily use, it has already patinaed beautifully. It fits quite a lot of stuff inside despite being itty bitty and purse-portable. There are a lot of places to buy systems like this at a variety of price points. I was able to take advantage of a 30% off discount that Paper Republic was running, which unfortunately expired. You can sign up for their email list to receive 20% off your first Grand Voyageur, though.

Paper Republic sells very nice notebook refills specific to their measurements, but you can also use any notebooks 10 x 14 cm / 3.9 x 5.5 inches or smaller. I have a combination of Paper Republic notebooks, Moleskine Cahiers, and Eeboo notebooks designed by Yumi Kitagishi. I linked the wholesale set of Yumi Kitagishi so you could see all of the designs, but I buy them from a local toy store. I’m sure you can find them at any independent bookstore with a decent kids’ section as well.

I labeled my notebooks using my embossing label maker, which should be a mandatory household tool in my humble opinion.

Some other supplies I’ve been using regularly are Le Pen felt-tip pens, Zebra Sarasa vintage color gel pens, and Penco Clampy Clips, which help keep journals open when in use. I would love to tiptoe into the world of fountain pens and have done my fair share of lurking, but I am saving that for a thrill later down the line.

I’m a notorious sticker hoarder, but having somewhere semi-permanent and often referenced to decorate has loosened me up a bit. To celebrate my new sticker-happy habits, I bought this truly wonderful sticker book from a horrid site I shudder to support, but did. You know the one.

Systems

I thought long and hard about things I need to write down and all the types of things I wish I were writing down. My main goal with my journal ecosystem is to create an unplugged extension of my brain. Somewhere I like to spend time so I can stay off my screens and digest the world in a slower and more thoughtful way. Here is my current setup.

1. Español: A constant learning focus of mine is improving my Spanish. I’m conversationally fluent in Italian, so my comprehension is quite high, but I’ve never taken formal classes, so my foundation is spotty at best. I have regular opportunities to practice speaking Spanish with neighbors, friends, and at my kid’s school, but I still struggle with verb conjugations beyond the present tense and other intermediate grammar. I find that writing new words and conjugation tables down and thumbing through them multiple random times helps cement them in my head better than any app. I also write down phrases from songs, books I want to read, and any other cultural things I want to follow up on in more depth.

2. Scribble Scrabble: Lined Eeboo Notebook. This is by far my most-used notebook in my ecosystem, and it’s just a bunch of random in-the-moment lists, words, scrabbles, numbers, math, things I don’t want to forget. It’s served me better than any notes app ever has; I’m fully dependent on it for my daily functioning.

3. Brain Dump: This notebook is similar to the scribble scrabble, but is reserved for things that are long-term. A grocery list goes in scribble scrabble, and a list of possible pattern names goes in a brain dump.

4. Commonplace: A commonplace is a centralized place to collect and organize facts, quotes, art, research, observations, and questions. Often described as a personal encyclopedia of your mind and interests. I adore this type of journaling and am so glad I started a commonplace. One of my 2026 focus areas was archives/archiving, and a commonplace is exactly in line with that. I’ve been slowly taking notes on random research topics, art movements, quotes and people that inspire me. Last week, I was in Nashville to visit family and took notes during my trip to the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum and Hatch Print Show in my commonplace. It felt quite nerdy and quite chic, and I’m really looking forward to looking back over my notes and following up to add more.

   

5. Kid: I brainstormed a bunch of nerdy analog ways to kill time and journal with my kids and wrote them down on the first page of this notebook. I aspire to go on color and shape walks with them, blind contour art, scribe their book reviews from the library and use star stickers to rate them, write down bad day/bad mood plans, and junk journaling activities. My favorite kid activity so far is fruit sticker collecting, especially since it’s summertime.

6. Anti-scroll Activities: Right now, I have a sudoku book tucked in the back of my journal ecosystem, which the whole family takes turns using. I love having a scroll alternative and have used it in so many places, including the ER, when I had an unfortunate slip while ice skating at an 8-year-old’s birthday party.

I know my system will evolve with me, but I think this is a great start. I feel more grounded and connected to the real world with my pocket journal by my side. If you have any tips or cool things in your journal ecosystem, I want to hear about them! Especially what to do with your journals when you fill them, and if you have any favorite small photo sticker printers. What’s in your commonplace? Where is the weirdest place you’ve used your journal? I want to know it all.

xx Sadie

Loosely from left to right

My oldest child’s birthday is always the last week of school, which is fun and chaotic. I started a birthday tradition on his first birthday of staying up late the night before a family birthday to pull down our decoration tote and “surprise” the birthday person with a fully decorated and sometimes balloon and streamer booby-trapped house. It’s precious and fun and something the whole family looks forward to doing. Our two big kids are old enough to actually be helpful and take charge of small parts of the decoration, which makes it extra sweet.

Echo FPP pattern test letters. I’ve made more edits since taking this picture but haven’t been able to sew it up yet. Aiming for July/August release, I think.

My youngest child’s favorite board book. I don’t mind reading it over and over.

Paint cups from a community mural painting day at my kids’ school. I volunteered at the paint bar, and it was fast-paced and messy, but really fun. Brought me back to my days serving brunch rushes. I don’t know how I’d be managing in this world without the connection and positivity of our school community.

Greek salad 86 tomatoes and sub roasted or boiled beets. It’s less soggy and so tasty. Bonus, the beets turn everything pink if you have leftovers, and it keeps better than traditional Greek salad. I’ve been making it this way for years and probably won’t stop. Give it a try!

Eating dinner in the backyard season is upon us.

The most incredible tacos from the last day of school celebration. One of the zillion perks of choosing a Spanish/English Dual Language Immersion public school. Ignore the two naked tacos. My kids ended up letting me eat both after one bite, so I circled back and dressed them appropriately.

End-of-year teacher gift shrinky-dink note keychains. I had grander plans, but life happened, and these were cute, fun to make, and very thoughtful. 11/10 would recommend this as a teacher gift, will be repeating again.

The most divine smelling sweet pea blossoms my mom brought us.

Coffee and my new-ish journal ecosystem (post with deets in the works).

World Cup fever nice and strong over here! We watched the first USA game projected on a historic ship in the harbor near our house. Our city is home to the famous Rosie the Riveters and shipyard history is everywhere. This particular event, watching the World Cup in the depths of the ship, was very cool and very weird. My oldest keeps talking about “that freaky ship”. My husband and I also made it to the Jordan vs. Austria game at Levi Stadium, which was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for us.

Last but not least, I’ve been informed you can use pool diving gems to charge your chakras when you’re in a pinch.

Thanks for reading. I hope you, too, are luxuriating in the early days of summer.

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One font was quite a simple brief: let’s make a Spaghetti Western-style FPP font. Obvious for a sewing business called Spaghetti Western Sewing, no?

Purchase Here

Working on this was silly and surprising at every turn. I think you’d be delighted to discover how often Western fonts are used casually in our everyday environment once you start looking for them. This could be a California-specific phenomenon, but I doubt it. I was also surprised at all the different flavors of Western text floating around out there in the world. After months (maybe close to a year?) of playing an ongoing game of Eye Spy Western Font, we decided to go for a real Ghost Town, cartoon evil villain with this one. I (biasedly) think the final alphabet delivers on vibes, and I can’t wait to see what people make with it!

While working on the Western font, another idea popped into my head, and I couldn’t resist tackling both ideas simultaneously. Protest art and the importance of text in art have been at the top of my mind for many years and more intensely in the last couple of months due to *gestures at the state of the US’s fuck-ass government*. I loved reading Design Behind “I AM A MAN” Protest Poster and Text is King here on Substack. I also stumbled across Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party at my local library on one of those dreamy, unhurried maternity leave mornings and took it home with me to pore over.

I was also strongly moved and inspired by the Freedom Quilt and the graphic design/iconography of civil rights movements in the Bay Area. I am a proud native of the San Francisco Bay Area, and if you’ve had the pleasure to live here, you know how steeped in justice and protest culture we are. The more I thought about the roots of this visual inspiration, the more sources popped into my head. Here are a few sources I dove into to get you started.

1. Free Speech Movement,

2. City of Berkeley

3. David Lance Goines

4. 1977 504 Sit-Ins,

5. Black Panther Party Iconography.

All of these have been in my realm of awareness to some degree, but I took this opportunity to get quite geeky about it. I really enjoyed having these as the foundation of my work while coaxing my spouse to make infinite silly, itty-bitty 1/16-inch adjustments to my Echo letters (he was a great sport and extremely accommodating). It helped remind me that art and design aren’t by accident; they are a conversation. When you listen closely to those before you and around you, your own work is informed and hopefully contributes to the conversation rather than awkwardly parroting it. You might not see the influence of these people and movements blatantly in the Echo FPP letters, but they all helped shape them as they tumbled out of my brain and into existence. At the very least, it kept my momentum going to push through two FPP alphabet patterns simultaneously.

The name “Echo” references these inspirations and how resistance vibrates through generations and timelines. This concept has been heavy on my mind and has shown up in so many ways. During my recent and last maternity leave, I read the Suzanne Collins Hunger Games prequels, Sunrise on the Reaping and The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, and then proceeded to read the original trilogy. I feel a bit sheepish admitting what a big influence these YA books have on me, but I really enjoy Suzanne Collins' writing! I was happy to find that re-reading the Hunger Games series at a different point in my life was just as enjoyable and thought-provoking as it was the first time in my teens. I found the new prequels especially added layers of nuance and complexity to the world, themes, and characters. The movies don’t even begin to do the heft of the storyline justice. Maybe it’s part of ageing, but shifting into a phase in my life where I am the steward of the next generation feels like looking into an infinity mirror and realizing that at my back there are hundreds of people and stories I will never know, but touch me, and at my front extends the same, just in the future. I’m also old enough now to look back on my younger, fiery self with tenderness and confidently know that the urgency and nowness I felt then is a gift of the age that matures with time. I look at folks older than me now and know that they were once teenagers, slowly molded by chance and choices just like me. After stewing in these thoughts while rocking my baby to sleep, doing laundry, grocery shopping, changing diapers, pumping, tidying, wiping, sweeping, and a little bit of weeping, I have a new lens to experience information with. I watched the Freedom Riders Documentary on PBS shortly after gaining this new lens and felt so grateful and in awe of how much was risked for our generation to be facing the fights we are instead of the codified segregation of the 1960s.

A final disclaimer

It is kind of ridiculous to design an FPP pattern based on traditional alphabet piecing blocks, I know! The letter identity exists precisely because of the limitations of patchwork, but hear me out! FPP allows the maker a higher level of precision and, therefore, control over each letter’s design details. I was able to make lots of small tweaks, which impact the overall feeling of the alphabet in a way that is challenging to do with patchwork. The accuracy of an FPP letter will always be much higher than a patchwork letter, no matter how skilled a sewist you are, so it also guarantees continuity in letter outcome. I do think part of the charm of patchwork lettering is the inconsistency of it, but FPP can be a less frustrating option for newer sewists and/or someone embarking on a large project.

FPP also allows you to use abstract fabric scraps and skip the tedious process of cutting and managing hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of small and precise quadrilateral shapes. FPP provides a lot more sizing flexibility as well, since you can go much smaller than patchwork and easily print the letter templates scaled up or down to change the size without having to recalculate anything. We even designed a seam allowance indication so that you have a 1/4” seam allowance guide when you print at 100%, 150%, and 200%, which was my brilliant spouse’s idea and, to my knowledge, the first FPP alphabet with this feature. Without the guides, you’d have to redraw a 1/4” seam allowance onto each section if printing at anything other than 100% scale.

The Spaghetti Western Alphabet pattern was released yesterday and is on sale until Friday, 5/22. Echo is mid-test sew and may have a couple of style edits left, but I expect it to be ready within a month max. I hope you found some part of the behind-the-scenes share interesting. Let me know if I didn’t cover something you’d like to know! I simply enjoy the process of FPP and hope these patterns encourage folks to create some beautiful and strongly worded quilt art to echo throughout your own ecosystems and generations.

Spaghetti Western FPP Alphabet

This one is torturously close to release! My testers sewed the entire alphabet and gave feedback, which I’ve already implemented into the pattern. I’ve sewn a variety of samples and most letters myself as well. I’m just waiting on the last package with sample letters to arrive, which was mailed over two weeks ago and should have already arrived. They are somewhere in the USPS ether, hopefully arriving any day now. I’ve started to re-sew them just in case. On Friday, I recorded a long-form FPP tutorial, but I am really struggling with planning and executing videos with multiple shots. I just felt incredibly stupid and self-conscious the whole time I was recording and wanted to crawl back into the earth rather than continue to talk at the camera alone with a silly little fuzzy clip-on mic. I ordered some new equipment and hope to have time this week to set it up so I can re-record some footage and then edit it all together. I am feeling very bratty and whiny about the whole thing. I don’t want to take the time to learn how to do the technical/logistical side of video recording, but I know once I push through it’ll be fun and I’ll find my own style and method for producing this new kind of media. This is kind of a trial run to see if it’s something I can manage for my other patterns. If I think about that too much, I’ll cry, so I’m just focusing on getting a somewhat decent FPP tutorial out there because I genuinely love FPP and want more people to give it a try!

Baseball Top & Dress

This one has also made some great strides in the last couple of weeks! I sent the pattern off to be graded, and it came back. While that was off, I started working on drawing the images for the pattern tutorial and expanding the written instructions from chicken scratch bullet points for myself to fully cooked sentences. I just finished a passable version of the instructions today and sent the draft pattern files and instructions to my fit testers. I’m still not 100% confident with the neckline facing, and it’s weighing on my mind. I won’t bore you with all the details of how I’m working on that, but the number of close-up vintage baseball Tee screenshots on my phone is alarming. While my fit testers are knocking out quick muslins, I’m going to do another muslin and draft the facing by hand to compare to the one I drafted digitally. My pen & paper drafting intuition is still much stronger than my digital one, and I think it’ll actually be a fun learning experience to see how the two facings are similar or differ and how it impacts fit. Hopefully, they are similar, and all of this turmoil is for naught, but if I need to tweak or redraft, so be it!

I’ve also started to do more concentrated research on lettering options for the jersey. I’d like to include some tips and tricks in the pattern, and I’m leaning towards wool felted lettering. I’ve had several people message me excited about combining the FPP font patterns with this pattern, which is a very fun idea, too. I haven’t fully formed my opinions on how best to construct that yet and will need to spend more time chewing that over.

If no major edits need to be made after fit testing, I anticipate having an open test call in late May/early June, which would mean pattern release late June/early July. I try not to plan out timelines too much with patterns because it adds a faux urgency that doesn’t benefit the pattern, but it is helpful to have a rough estimate.

Echo FPP Alphabet

I think this is the first time I’m sharing the name of my second FPP font! I had so much fun doing the research for this font, and it holds a lot of meaning, even if it is a technically simpler font and pattern design. I’ll share a whole post on the inspiration and influences behind it, but it’s called Echo because it’s inspired by the generations of folks who have used textile lettering and quilt graphics in protest art. The Freedom Quilt and Bay Area/Berkeley counterculture in the 1960s are two of the biggest inspirations. I’m working with just one tester this time, who is geographically close to try to avoid any precious letters being lost in the mail again. Last Friday, I chose the fabrics for the alphabet and am proud of myself for branching off from the classic colorway I always go for. This pattern could potentially be ready for release sooner than the Baseball pattern; we’ll see. I can’t wait to get these released so I can spend more time actually sewing all the lettered quilts I am itching to!

Birthday

This past Sunday was my birthday. I turned 36, but I perceive myself to be older, so every time I remember the actual number, I get a jump scare. Could have sworn I’ve spiritually been 40 for years now. I’m an Aries/Taurus cusp born just 5 minutes away from the crossover, and as a fiery little homebody, I think it hits. I usually plan a little party, but I wasn’t up to it this year, so my family and friends did sweet little things to celebrate instead. We have a couple of birthday traditions, one of which is decorating the house on the birthday eve while the birthday person is asleep. It’s so fun for kids to stay up past their usual bedtime, and their enthusiasm is infectious. We reuse the same decorations every birthday in new ways, which makes it extra special. The tradition doesn’t work quite so well for the adults of the family, though, so last year we decorated the sailboat we dock just 5 minutes from our house, as a surprise for Dad’s birthday instead. This year, my family decorated our dining area a bit lackluster while I was out with friends, which threw me off their trail, and then revealed that they had sneakily also decorated the backhouse, which currently operates as my sewing studio

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My big kids (7 & 5) recently learned how to cook our special birthday pancakes and made me breakfast in bed. While I’m pleased to report it was edible, there is some room for improvement for future years. Obviously, I ate every last crumb with gusto, regardless.

We’re not much of a present family, but I did get the book I texted my husband to buy me, some art from the children, frames to display it, AND I bought myself an obscene amount of socks, which brings me more joy than I care to admit. It was gorgeous weather, so we headed to Devil’s Teeth for takeout lunch to enjoy at Ocean Beach. The Great Highway & Sunset neighborhood is one of the places I feel most at peace. I have a handful of places I hope my kids connect with their childhood memories, and this is one of them. Any excuse to visit is a treat.

After plenty of sun (the fog burned off, classic SF!), sand, and full bellies, we drove across town to meet dear friends for some scootering in Noe Valley's slow streets. They surprised us with a sinful flourless chocolate raspberry tart and raspberry radlers, which we ate in the street while watching the kids zoom around amongst the beautiful Victorian houses. After a few too many wipeouts and skinned elbows, we loaded up in the car. I dashed out for a quick sniff tour of Marissa Zappas perfumes at Ministry of Scent while the rest of the family found a gas station and filled up before driving back home. The store was uncomfortably crowded, and they didn’t have any samples which was most of why I stopped in. The sales associates were hard to find and didn’t seem thrilled to be there so I spritzed my wrists with two scents and got outta there. At first, I thought my sniff tour/spritz and dash was a miss, and was disappointed. I’ve been so intrigued by Marissa Zappas story telling, notes and branding and really hoped to fall in love with something. The wrist I sprayed with Violette Hay initially smelled vile to me. I couldn’t stop going back to it over and over on the drive though and when we arrived at home 30 minutes later I felt possible glimmers of obsession. It made me wonder if perhaps I missed some of the experience of the other perfumes in her line, too. I ended up ordering a sample of Violette Hay and a couple of other interesting ones from a sample shop online when we got home.

We got home totally wiped, ordered takeout, had a second cake with my mom, and then I accidentally fell asleep at 8 pm, officially a well-loved and celebrated old lady.

Read-A-Thon

As a teacher, mom, and human being, childhood literacy is a big passion of mine, which is part of the reason I took on chairing my kids’ school PTA Read-A-Thon this year. I have a lot of very complex feelings about PTA fundraising, all boiling down to the idea that if we just fully funded public education for all schools, we wouldn’t need to uphold racist and classist systems of oppression in education. While that is my core belief and the horizon I’m always working towards, it seems very distant right now. We’re facing huge cuts to our public school funding, and Title 1 schools like ours have to fundraise to afford the bare necessities like adequate recess staff to maintain safety and more than one ream of copy paper per month per teacher. As someone who works inside public education, I know that our school communities are incredibly resourceful and resilient, and we make miracles happen with crumbs. It keeps me sane and hopeful. At the same time, we need money, honey! The Read-a-thon ended up being a huge amount of work, but I had a team of kick-ass moms doing it with me. We pulled off a community reading day with bilingual guest readers for every single classroom, including our city mayor, a female firefighter and firetruck, local medical professionals, an immigration lawyer & community activists. We also had a dress up as a book character day, Drop Everything And Read drills, reading buddies, prizes for top readers, ribbons for every student that met their grade level reading goal, top class popsicle parties, and silly string the principal at community circle when we reached our fundraising goal. It was a lot and so much fun, and thank god it’s over, but also can’t wait for next year! I also managed to wear #SWSJuno for my Viola Swamp costume!

Enzo Pant Pattern

I released my second kid pattern on April 17th, which is simultaneously the pattern I am most proud of and excited about, and the worst performing in terms of launch sales. ‘Tis but a flesh wound, luckily I don’t rely on sales for my livelihood since the majority of my time/money is spent on my job in education. It’s also a great reminder that putting your heart into something and chasing your weird might not pay off financially, but it does wonders for the soul, and that can be more than enough. I have a feeling that long-term, this pattern will do well, so it’ll be interesting to keep an eye on it.

For this pattern, I did things a bit differently, which took a lot longer and more energy, but made me feel incredibly confident in the end result. I also got to collaborate with my favorite photographer, Maryam Salassi from Hi + Hello Photography, and my cousin and prop master, Tay Kennedy. I panic sewed four Enzo pants for my two big kids and my two other fav little small homies to wear. Then we had a silly and chaotic photoshoot in Maryam’s gorgeous studio in Emeryville on a cozy, blustery Sunday morning. I’ll write a longer post about the pattern inspo, design process, and details at some point, so stay tuned!

Patterns Loading…

While I was working on finalizing and releasing the Enzo Pant pattern, I had a couple of other SWS projects simmering at different stages. I’ve found that having multiple projects going at once helps my brain take a little break to focus on something different and come back to each pattern with fresh eyes.

I have two Foundation Paper Piecing fonts designed, and the western one was ready just a day or so before the other, so I put out a call for testers and got that going. The test samples are just starting to arrive now, which is so exciting! Launch could be in 2 or so weeks, but we’ll see how it all pans out.

I’m continuing to chip away at my baseball-inspired top & dress pattern. I still need to name the pattern, which is unusual for me. Typically, the name is one of the first things I come up with, but it’s not revealing itself yet for this one. Getting the neckline just right was haunting me, not in a bad way, but in a heavily considering options and directions this could go, many a waking hour. I started to get so hyper-focused on minute details that I worried I was overdrafting it to my own particular skeletal frame to the detriment of the overall fit across other bodies. I decided to get the neckline to “good enough” status and send it to be graded and then fit tested. Then I can make tweaks and adjustments with a more informed perspective and larger sample size. I just got the graded files back last week and am working on illustrating the directions so I can get that out to my trusty fit testers soon.

Cup Filling

My brain is mush, but my heart is full thanks to the following

1. Very eery and unusual heatwave in March here in Northern California. We spent a lot of time outside which was lovely, but it was all tinged with some climate dread.

   

2. I subscribed to a handful of very cool zines and an amazing 6 month art class with which has been keeping me so inspired.

   Pictured: A seasonal companion for Creativity & Reflection by

   Zine Club! by

   Not Pictured: Cloud Report by

   

3. Hosted my free social sewing circle Scrap Night in Berkeley at Studio Sessions. It’s usually the second Saturday of every month. I bring snacks and project a movie on the wall, you bring a lap project and yourself! It’s a nice time.

   

4. Made it to my first Early Birds Club. It was life changing. I ran into many very cool ladies from different parts of my life who apparently all love to get jiggy with it which was really fun.

And with that, I bid you adieu and promise my next dispatch won’t take me nearly as long to publish.

xx Sadie

I’ve posted about this niche complaint several times on Instagram, and every time I get almost an equal number of responses from three camps. One, agreeing with my forlorn nostalgia for the sewing #s of yesteryear, a second group, unaware that anything has changed or that there was a different # ecosystem and a third group who felt like something changed but aren’t quite sure what, and are slightly annoyed with it but not sure why. So please, allow me the honor of sharing the history and of Instagram sewing pattern #s and how Instagram’s algorithm changes destroyed our best tool for community building and inclusivity.

Back in the late 20teens and early 2020s, Instagram # used to be a straightforward and powerful tool for sewists. Anyone could post their makes and use the pattern # to group posts into a wonderful visual encyclopedia of patterns, fabric, body shapes, fit, and hacks. All public posts with that # were visible to everyone. You had two filters available, one to organize #ed posts by most recent and the second showed the posts according to the current algorithm. The algorithm was never disclosed, but based on toggling between the two, you could tell it factored in most likes, people you follow, people who paid, most engagement, etc. To see a true representation of makes across a wide range of bodies, skill levels, and experiences for a pattern, all you had to do was click “recent” at the top and scroll to your heart’s content. Makes were almost always posted with sizing, body measurements, and details on modifications made or planned for the future. Anecdotally, I think it helped convince some of us shy guys that posting our little me-made fashion served a greater good, and therefore was worthy of digital time and space. I know it gave me the perfect group effort excuse I needed to start posting self-timed full body photos in my makes, which felt equally cringe and exhilarating. It got me out of my own dang head and forced me to live a little, for the sewing community if not for myself, initially.

As a sewist, I used this RELIGIOUSLY before choosing which patterns to purchase, which fabrics to use, and which hacks and modifications would suit my body. I found the majority of my most beloved accounts this way, including a large group of sewists across the world who have similar height, measurements, and fashion interests to me. You could also tell a lot about the patterns from seeing a full representation of the makes in one place, unrelated to or managed by the designer. Personally, if the pattern looked off on the full range of sizes, even if it looked good in my size, I didn’t buy it. To me, that indicated a grade and/or design issues, a poor investment in meaningful fit testing, and inclusivity. If lots of posts mentioned having an issue with the zip fly, I knew to expect barebones instructions. If the pattern claimed to be unisex, but every single make was on a femme-presenting body or looked off on a masc frame, I learned to look elsewhere when sewing for my husband. It also allowed people to post their honest feedback using the #, without tagging the designer, which felt helpful and neutral rather than a callout. The best part was that posting your own make felt like you were meaningfully contributing to a group project and finding community.

As a pattern designer, I used to rely on #s to showcase the versatility of my patterns across a wide variety of bodies, fabrics, and styles. #s did a better job representing my work than I ever could, especially as a single, part-time, self-taught designer. I put a lot of effort into selecting a wide range of testers who would represent the pattern, which would begin to populate the # upon pattern release and soft launch the pattern’s personality into the sewing world. Then, slowly but surely, the # would grow and morph as more benevolent sewists added their photos and make details. It allowed my patterns to take on life beyond my singular taste and sensibilities, which never ceased to delight me. It was a fun and inclusive place to be on the internet!

The sewstagram # is dead and has been for a long while.

For years now, that has all changed. I do not know the exact timeline or details of the coding behind it. What I do know is that now the algorithm dictates which # show up, and there is no way to see all posts or toggle to “recent”. I stumble upon posts I’m tagged in as a designer, but don’t come up when I search very frequently, so I know there is censorship happening. The posts you see are mostly based on popularity, which promotes all the ugly biases we all know too well (racism, fat phobia, ageism, etc.). There are also “suggested” posts you can’t opt out of, which is incredibly annoying and confusing if you are trying to do a pattern, deep dive. Not to mention the steady creep of AI slop into suggested posts, which gets increasingly bizarre and unrelated to the #. Instagram took a group project and turned it into a capitalist popularity contest.

Enter Threadloop.

To you knitters out there, Threadloop is Ravelry for sewing. For the uninitiated, Threadloop is a wonderful sewist-specific platform that can meet some of our digital sewing community's needs. It was created by our very own sewing community member, Guro Flaten. I was a lucky beta tester and continue to be a paying member. If you primarily use sewing Instagram as a digital make log and enjoy inventory/journaling type activities, this platform will fulfill your needs and then some! All the most essential features of the platform are available with a free membership, so everyone can join and contribute. If you can afford it, I highly encourage you to support through a paid subscription, which is $5 or $48 a year. Guro is incredibly engaged with the sewing community, which shows in the thoughtful functionality and frequent updates on the platform. If you are into a hyper-niche sewing space, this is the internet place for you!

Even with this great option, we have still lost a powerful community tool, and most sewists and all designers still rely on Instagram. To be completely candid, I am not active on Threadloop and don’t plan to be. Threadloop is a niche in a very special but also exclusive way. It is a smaller platform for a specific purpose, so its reach and community are smaller.

For example, here are my top two most popular patterns:

Henrietta Skirt: 101 projects on Threadloop and 1000+ on Insta (#SWSHenrietta)

Rue Quilt Coat: 8 projects on Threadloop and 500+ on Insta (#SWSRue)

Threadloop is a sewing place for your sewing self. It is a review-based platform, which has obvious utility, but also gives Yelp in a way that puts me on edge as someone whose work is being reviewed. That’s not to knock the platform, reviews, or how important feedback from the community is to small designers. I only wear one hat on that platform, and it is a pattern designer, which makes me feel like I’m at Work with a capital W.

On single-purpose platforms, there is no opportunity for the fashion, art girl, thrifter, clay, fiber art, social justice, body positive, etc. crossovers that happen so seamlessly on social media like Instagram and Tik Tok. If you’re a dabbler or sewing curious, you probably aren’t on Threadloop, therefore missing a vast and interesting group of people in the conversation. On Instagram, I share parts of my whole self and connect with people about all my art hobbies, but also my career in special education, motherhood, politics/activism, passion for neighborhood public schools, kids’ books, traveling, fostering a bilingual household, gardening, audiobooks, cooking, home renovation, small home living, music, fashion, and whatever the hell else I feel like sharing. I also love learning these things about other pattern designers and sewists. I am rich in meaningful friendships with people I know digitally across the world, thanks to a shared interest in sewing and other coincidental overlapping interests. It is also much easier to evaluate the values businesses and designers hold on a social platform, which helps me make decisions about who I choose to support with my money, energy, and attention. For me, that better fulfills my need for a digital community in this moment. Sharing, connecting with, and consuming people’s whole selves gives sewing and fashion heart and soul for me.

It took me a long time to untangle all these thoughts within myself, and it unfortunately led me to the conclusion that while I hate the tech overlords puppeteering our social media in all the wrong ways, I have also forged a really special sewing community on Instagram that I adore and rely on for creative fulfilment and my business. I could have never dreamed the life I live now before I started a sewing account, and I can’t dream of a life without it now.

Speaking of business, inclusivity has always been a core value of Spaghetti Western Sewing. If you’ve followed me on Instagram for any amount of time, you know this! If you purchase a pattern, you also know this from the intentional choices and explanations on the sizing page. If you stumble across my website or social media presence, it is not as clear as it should be. That’s something I’ve been wanting to update for a long time. I didn’t have a clear idea of how to do it well with limited resources (time, money, and photoshoot experience). I also think a photoshoot wouldn’t represent my patterns or my brand in the way I want them to be seen. I want people to see themselves in SWS patterns and feel excited and included in that process. I like a little DIY, punk, rough around the edges, grassroots vibe, and I don’t think that can be achieved without community involvement. At the same time, SWS patterns have strong personalities, which I take great care to form and telegraph to potential sewists. This requires some curation and direction on my part, and is something I think Spaghetti Western Sewists appreciate about a SWS pattern. Finding a way to coordinate and balance those two things in a way that feels true and sustainable took a long time, but I’m really excited about what I’ve come up with!

Bottom line, as a pattern designer, I need to better represent the wide range of hotties who make & wear SWS patterns.

I finally have most of the plans for how to do this and some capacity to do so! This will be a huge task to undertake, but it’s going to be FUN (god dammit). The goals will be as follows:

1. A series of “pattern cards” on each pattern listing on my website. It will list the maker’s measurements, size sewn, and any mods/hacks, and represent a variety of sizes and stylings. I hope to have 5-10 of these cards per pattern. I worked with Suze Meyers in Summer 2025 on SWS branding, and this was one of the projects we tackled together. The design of these pattern cards is loosely based on vintage pattern envelopes and this French Dispatch Movie poster:

Here is a loose layout of what we came up with, which will likely evolve as I collect images, info, and ideas:

I will, of course, be asking permission and compensating folks before sharing their images on my website and Instagram grid. This is where I need a little bit of feedback, though. I think I can safely afford $25 per image, which doesn’t sound like a lot until you start multiplying it by 5-10 people and 5-10 patterns. I thought about how I could make $25 more valuable and settled on a $25 gift certificate to a favorite sewing business. It would be a great excuse to support my fellow small sewing businesses, AND I’m not sure why, but to me, $25 you have to spend on a creative pastime feels a lot more luxurious than a $25 paypal I could and should put towards bills in this economy. So my question is, does this make any sense? Does it sound fair? Would you want to have your image and make used for this purpose? What businesses would you be most excited to get a gift card to?

2. The next tool in this trifecta is styling highlights featuring my patterns! I will start collecting posts I’m tagged in with fun styling ideas and doing some themed styling a la @whatabbeywore and @tartan_tarlatan. Recently, I visited my local fabric store and attempted to keep my cool as I saw an employee walk by wearing a Henrietta skirt and a hoodie, which is a next-level cool girl styling combo I’d never seen before. It made me think about how I can better showcase all the ways to wear my patterns, something I myself need reminders about, too.

3. Lastly, I’m going to start a series called “Out-Spaghettied” which will highlight pattern hacks! Hacks are still my favorite thing to do and see in the sewing world, and they deserve their time to shine if #s won’t be giving it to them. I also write hacks into most of my patterns and make lots of construction decisions while designing, based on which will lend themselves well to hacks. Recently, I realized that a lot of things that seem core Spaghetti Western Sewing people who have been following for a while, and me, probably aren’t at first glance or even just to newer people in this corner of the internet. The on-trend nostalgia for an analog lifestyle and a 90s childhood has reminded me that taste comes from exploration and repetition. New all the time is exhausting, and there is deep value to circling back to the same outfit, ideas, and patterns to discover how they hit. Sometimes you just need a tiny tweak or revisit to breathe new excitement into an old piece.

So let’s talk timeline.

I currently have 8 patterns with 2 more in production. This task is an impossible amount of coordination for one person working one day a week to do for all patterns at once. I actually feel the stress migraine coming on just thinking about it for one pattern. So, I’ve decided to tackle this project slowly and steadily. I’m going to choose one pattern at a time to highlight for a specific amount of time. To make it fun for all of us, I’ll throw in some discounts, style challenges, maybe a collab or giveaway. It’s going to be a good time! I’ll likely start with Henrietta since spring is coming and she’s such a loved and fun sew. It’s taken a while to get here, and there is a lot of work ahead, but I’m really glad I took the time to think through this deeply and find a solution that feels right for SWS and honors the sewing # good ol’ days.

So, not sure exactly when, but keep your eyes peeled for:

SWS Pattern Parties: Sew-a-long style pattern spotlight, styling prompts, and celebration

Out-Spaghettied!: Hack highlights, tutorials, and pattern extensions

Two years ago, I took my Valentine on a tour of the Eames Archive, which left a significant imprint on the energy and thoughtfulness I apply to my design process for Spaghetti Western Sewing patterns.

If I had to choose just one lasting idea (I have an incredibly long brain dump in my phone, I typed up exactly two steps after exiting the tour, which I refer to often), it would be that good design is simultaneously very serious and impossible without playfulness. I find those two very difficult to balance, which creates a very torturous and addictive interior monologue. I overthink and am too aware of Reddit chatter*, which I think dials down the patterns I’m willing to pursue. At the same time, I perseverate on every tiny detail and build entire personalities and auras around each of my patterns, which (I think) results in a really fun final pattern, but is very draining and a bit melodramatic for a $12 PDF product.

After every new Spaghetti Western pattern, I vehemently proclaim this is my last, and everyone who knows me laughs good-naturedly, knowing I’ll pull my head out of my ass sooner or later and find something new to fixate on. I’m trying to shift my mindset a bit on this front to see if I can help myself feel a little less emotionally wrung out by each pattern. We’ll see how that evolves; maybe it’s a necessary evil to my creative process.

*I don’t actually read the Craft Snark Reddit thread because it makes me feel like I’ve been violently ejected back to 2005 gossip circles. I have enough unadulterated anxiety from my own brain thankyouverymuch. I do recognize that there are some very valuable aspects of the thread, and many people love it, though. I respect that it exists and serves a purpose, and also, you will never find me filling my head with anonymous snark on Reddit. I’m too fragile a flower for that.

The Secret Sugo to a Spaghetti Western pattern.

The more I work through my own design process, the more I hunger to pull back the curtain to see how other artists and creatives navigate the murky space between idea and art. In light of this design thinking anniversary, I thought it might be fun to share how an idea becomes a Spaghetti Western pattern!

To start, I am terrible with realistic production timelines, but I do attempt to consider them. I work a full-time job in education and have three kids, so my drafting time is precious, fleeting, and never enough. I think on average, it takes me about a year from a pattern idea approval to release. Picture that cliche glacier infographic of all the work that comes before a pattern is ready to test under the water, and testing & pattern release the tippy top bit above the water. The next pattern I’m working on is a kid’s pant pattern co-designed with my oldest son. I sewed the first toile in August 2024, when he started kindergarten, and we have been wear-testing and tweaking it well into 2nd grade. It’s not that the pattern is difficult to create; it’s just that ideas and possibilities aren’t done simmering yet. We haven’t fully formed our taste & opinions for this design idea, and that’s just how it goes. In contrast, the idea for Ornella popped into my head in March while listening to Love to Love You, Baby on my way to work, and dreaming of summer. I had planned to bust out the pattern the first week of April on my Spring Break and run the test while on maternity leave, while waiting to give birth mid-May, but my son ended up coming 7 weeks early. I still managed to sew the first toile in May, and release it in September, though. I have yet to be able to accurately plan and release a pattern seasonally appropriately to my hemisphere, although I think I get a pass for Ornella. My husband and I joke, “SWS is big in Australia,” because my releases tend to line up with their seasons much better, and that works just fine for me.

Idea Soup

I currently have 304 images in an album on my phone called “drafting inspo” with the earliest image dated 11/11/2020. It is a huge jumble of sources, anything from vintage advertisements to the actual insides of a ready-to-wear garment with an interesting construction detail. There are certain design details that always catch my attention, so I have many pictures of slight variations of things like my favorite collar styles or interesting use of elastic cinching. Sometimes I have a loose idea of a full garment I’m interested in drafting someday, and sometimes it’s a small detail I have no idea if or how it will eventually slip into one of my patterns. Sometimes something seemingly random catches my attention, and I snap a picture only to realise that I’ve been collecting similar images subconsciously for months. When I get in a creative funk, I visit this visual soup of ideas to see what catches my energy in that moment and remind myself of the limitless options I’ve already amassed.

The next part of the process is filtering out ideas. I am a self-taught pattern designer who started as a home sewist, so my biggest considerations are:

1. Is it fun to sew, and am I excited about the design challenges it poses?

2. Do I have the technical skills to pull the idea off?

I’m very comfortable drafting any garment for myself, but I feel a very heavy responsibility to deliver high-quality, inclusively sized designs to customers. Drafting is a skill and an art, and while anyone can follow a formula and self-draft something, I think it takes a bit of alchemy to design a garment destined to become a pattern for a wide variety of bodies and sewing skill levels. This adds a huge number of variables to the design equation, which requires a different knowledge base and skill set. It’s my opinion that formal education isn’t strictly necessary to create great patterns, but a healthy dose of self-awareness and caution as a non-traditional designer is absolutely warranted. I get better and learn more with every pattern I release, but there are still a significant number of ideas and designs that are just outside of what I feel comfortable pushing forward at my current experience and skill level.

I don’t intend for pattern designing to be a full-time career for me, but if I did, I would pursue formal education to build my technical drafting skills. Learning new techniques in a structured educational environment and having open access to professionals and peers in the fashion industry would be a huge opportunity to grow and open so many doors. Heck, I would do it just for fun if that was a feasible option! I am also curious to learn more about industry standards and practices, including garment fabrication. I don’t think that expertise directly translates to home sewing patterns, but it would be very interesting and certainly doesn’t hurt! Where are the job shadow/internship opportunities for moms with full-time jobs in other fields?

Coming from a home-sewing background comes with some advantages, though! I was never formally taught the rules, expectations, and biases that come with syllabized instruction, so I make rookie mistakes but also rookie wins, too. I know what it’s like to be a beginner with limited time and resources. I know what it’s like to cut fabric on a dining room table and fight animals and kids to get your notions back. I know the types of construction details that are fun to sew on home machines as a novice, and which will make you rip your hair out. I take great pride in making sure the experience of sewing a Spaghetti Western pattern is fun and accessible to a variety of skill levels. I like to think of my patterns as “unfussy,” meaning you don’t need a great deal of precision for a nice final garment. Those are my favourite garments to sew and the ones I tend to wear the most too. I also want my patterns to be in heavy rotation in your wardrobe. This means there are some more boxes for an idea to check before it moves forward. These are the next questions I ask myself:

• Can you think of 3-5 versions of this garment you’d wear regularly?

• Does this pattern have design flexibility for fluctuating bodies?

• Will this pattern feel good and grade well for body types other than mine?

• Can you think of 5-10 outfits/stylings for this garment?

• Are there at least 3 occasions/places you would wear this garment?

• Does a pattern like this already exist? If so, why is this one different and necessary?

• Is there room to encourage the maker to use their own creativity and hacks with the design?

If the garment passes these questions, I start to sketch out a couple of different variations and brainstorm construction options. I search for existing patterns using Google, Etsy, and Threadloop. I also post on my Instagram stories to make sure I’m not missing any. Luckily, I haven’t gotten this far with a pattern idea and then found something already out there in the pattern world. If the garment has a singular direct inspiration (either vintage or ready-to-wear), I research to find as many similar styles of garments as I can, usually on Pinterest and keyword/image Google searches. I collect other inspiration sources, often scrolling through my “drafting inspo” album to see if there are any fun construction details I have squirrelled away that would play nicely with the design. I also order vintage patterns on Etsy to reference for a variety of style lines and construction details. I note the differences and similarities between all of these and start to Franken-design.

I started drafting by hand, then challenged myself to learn to draft digitally. Since releasing Juno, my patterns have been designed fully digitally, which saves a lot of time. It has allowed me to realise that I enjoy the process so much more by hand! I’m reverting to a funky blend of the two for my next patterns, which will be a new, fun way to play.

Once a pattern gets past the idea soup, R&D, checklist, and franken-design, it enters the production phase, which is much less alchemy and much more business. This involves piles of toiles, grading, fit testing, instructions, illustrations, open testing, sewing samples, photoshoots, and finally, pattern release. By that time, I never want to see my pattern AGAIN. I’m usually mentally and emotionally exhausted and far too close to every tiny detail to make sense of my true thoughts and feelings. Although I continue to enjoy wearing my patterns on heavy rotation, I need a good, long break from the process. It certainly doesn’t help that the majority of my time working on my patterns is 9 pm-12 am after my kids are tucked into bed and a full day of my 9-5 job is behind me.

Big Changes at SWS Headquarters!

Starting this month, I will have one M-F day of the week dedicated to Spaghetti Western Sewing projects for the first time! This change is four years in the works. Living in the SF Bay Area, it was a financial non-negotiable to be able to pay myself for the 8-hour day of pay I’d be missing. Knowing how fickle social media algorithms are, and as a business that relies almost entirely on Instagram, it’s taken me a really long time to feel comfortable taking this step. We’ve all witnessed many small beloved brands forced to close, and influencers dive into full-time influencing only to find they’ve flown a bit too close to the monetization sun. I take this step with an abundance of caution and the mindset that these daylight hours are primarily to give my brain some space to breathe. Although it was never explicitly part of my dreams or plans, I am so grateful and proud to be able to do this.

I don’t anticipate this time will speed up my process, but rather allow me to spend unrushed time and energy on my ideas. I have several pattern projects already in the works (both garment and quilt!), and pattern ideas yet to enter the next phase, which I’m excited to work on. I think I’m most excited to have time to sew new versions of my old patterns and work on a new way to share them on a variety of bodies and styles. I’m excited to revisit and rethink small details; maybe some updates or expansions will be released. I’m eager to find new ways to sew and wear old stuff. Maybe I’ll do some garment sew-alongs or hack guides for you all here. I can’t wait to have time to draft and sew just for fun to see what comes out. Extra time for drafting by hand and some freestyle draping. Maybe I’ll finally make a dent in my fabric stash! I’m entering my eccentric heirloom era and hope to emerge with a ridiculous vintage cartoon character villain wardrobe and catalogue of patterns to match.

Let me tell you all about my latest finished knit, a hot dog sweater vest! I meant to finish for my son’s birthday in June, but it ended up being a Christmas present. It took me this long because I ordered the yarn online, began to knit it, and had a horrible, creeping feeling that I hated the cream color, and I put it down for months while trying to decide what to do about it. I ended up pushing forward, and I now feel neutral about the color. I think another shade would make the hot dog pop better and play nicer with the orange ribbing, but it doesn’t actively bother me unless I think about it. Plus, it’s a knit for a 7-year-old, so its days are most likely numbered anyway.

I used the junior novice sweater pattern from Petite Knit.

The yarns I ordered are both Cascade 220 wool. Superwash, obviously, as it is for my kid, and nothing is sacred. The orange is the color 822 Pumpkin, and the cream is 369 Antiqued Heather. Antiqued Heather is just too yellow for me, I will be searching for a more agreeable Cascade 220 cream for future projects. As a newer knitter, I find Cascade 220 to be easy to work with, affordable, available in a bunch of colors, and it works for a variety of projects in my queue. I have been ordering from Wool & Company and really enjoy their selection & shipping times. Luckily, I had a bunch of hot dog-ish scrap yarn colors lying around to use, but I needed a color for the bun. I really didn’t want to buy new yarn, so I asked around in my craft circles to see if anyone had bun colored scraps, but struck out there too. I popped into a local yarn store, resigned to buying a whole skein just to get this project finally finished. On a whim, I told the sales associate what I was doing in case she had any other suggestions, and it turned out they just made a mini ball bar in the corner of their store. They had one color that was just dark enough to show up against the cursed antiqued heather cascade 220, so I snagged it and got to work!

To make the hot dog, I used a technique called duplicate stitch, which is so fun and easy! To duplicate stitch, you sew over existing stitches using a different yarn once your knitting is already complete. It’s great because the yarn management is very minimal, and no tension or advanced knitting skills are needed. You can find a lot of existing charts to follow online, but I designed my own in Procreate. Since then, I learned about an app called Knitting Chart, which I’m really excited to use for my next project. Although my Procreate chart worked, I ended up going a little rogue on it because knit fabric is not square. My stitches were wider than they were tall, so I made small adjustments as I stitched to keep the hot dog looking hot dog-y. I believe the knitting chart app automatically accounts for that, which makes it a much better tool for more complex designs.

Blocking totally transformed the vest and was well worth the 2 days of drying. And voila! Finally, just in time for Christmas, we had a finished hot dog vest.

Making time for

1. Friendships & community building: I went to an outdoor sauna and bookstore/wine bar with my knitting brain trust this month, joined Makers Night at Studio Sessions, hosted a free coffee stand for neighbors and friends, and saw an old friend’s book talk at Letterform Archive.

2. Potions and lotions: Skin was THIRSTY this month and these saved me herbavore face oil, Soft Services hand cream, Elf lip scrub.

3. Reading Strength of the Few by James Islington & Good Things by Samin Nosrat

4. Salad Dressings: Should I make a zine of my favs?

5. Libraries

Noticing

1. Fonts & signs

2. Clouds

3. Digital habits

4. Cato at Saatchi Yates

Researching

1. Journaling & fountain pens (Word Layout Tik Tok, Journal Rash Substack)

2. Internet Archive

3. Fruit trees: I went to a fruit tree talk with my mom at my local nursery and learned about urban edible orchards. I have a lot of edible plants and trees in my backyard, but this ignited a renewed obsession (Ed_able, Apple Ranking Website),

4. Pant yokes

Making

1. Protest FPP fonts

2. A Weekend Hat I promised my husband for his birthday * gulp * last April, so that I can knit what I really want: Yarn Plans Lilli Bonnet in poppy blue and possibly a men’s crewneck sweater vest to replace the one I ADORED and was accidentally felted this Fall. RIP, that discovery really hurt.

3. Long-term reward knit: Autumn Pullover in De Rerum Natura Gilliatt. Or Cardigan no 11 in Knitting for Olive Merino (not sure what color yet).

4. Honey Girl Pattern long sleeve crewnecks from cotton pointelle from Lyrical Fabrics. A base layer essential. Also, you can sew them 100 percent on any machine with an adjustable zig-zag stitch, and it really isn’t hard or scary, I swear!

5. Final tweaks on my Foundation Paper Piecing font before working on writing the instructions & formatting

6. Final toile of my kids’ pant pattern before sending it to be graded & editing instructions/starting illustrations

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Sometimes it feels small to create art in a time of such intense fear and consequence, but then I see work like Jessie Telfair’s Freedom Quilt and am reminded that we stand on the shoulders of giants. Our horror may be packaged in alarming new ways and delivered through screens in our pockets, but the people have always marched, and the people will always march. Songs, speeches, and art echo through generations and clasp our shoulders as if to reassure us. Our struggle is not so new, but what a tender and naive thought that is to sprout. I made this to hang in our front window in solidarity with Minnesota and the families and communities ICE is terrorizing and the peaceful protesters they’ve murdered. I linked the foundation paper piecing letter templates I designed with my husband at the bottom for you in case you’d like to make one for your window or next protest. I made some small edits for style and ease of sewing since making this, so yours will look slightly better than mine.

The PDF is just the letter templates, no instructions. If you don’t already know how to Foundation Paper Piece (FPP), you’ll need to look it up. There are lots of blogs and videos available to show you the basic technique. I’m working on two FPP alphabet patterns that will include beginner-friendly, detailed instructions and illustrations, so someday soon, those will be available too. If you’d prefer to have FUCK ICE in your window, let me know, and I’ll work on F, U and K next. UPDATE: Both messages are now available.

Sws Abolish Ice Fpp

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Sws Fuck Ice Fpp

99.4KB ∙ PDF file

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Kishu mandarin season makes me giddy, and imagine my delight when my 9-month-old’s precious, chubby little hand darted out to grab one, and it looked perfectly to scale. I noticed how cool the Lauryn Hill album looked on my Cool Your Jets record hug the other day, especially in the winter light next to my prized lamp candle. Brought a smile to my face and renewed my appreciation for artists making beautiful things I enjoy in my home. I bought a pound of young ginger at my favorite market, boiled it to make ginger water, and then candied the boiled ginger and kept the syrup too. They’re all fiery and warm you up from the inside. Makes me feel like a responsible ginger steward to have three things from one pound, and my house smells spicy and wonderful. I’ve been loving the book Comrade Sisters I checked out from the library. This quote in the picture particularly jumped out at me. I keep thumbing through the pages again and again, noticing new details. More citrus and winter light love, and my first Tess Rubinstein bumper sticker. I snapped it up at my local nursery while grabbing some seeds and window shopping the fruit tree section.

Take care, friends

1. Art show. I’m going to do my very best to make a body of work and display it somewhere in 2026. The rest of the details are nebulous, but that’s the fun of it all. I was just thinking to myself that quilting feels like art because the process of it is where the magic happens, while garment sewing doesn’t feel like it qualifies as art the same way because for me, the magic of garments comes in the utility of them and the infinite styling possibilities which come after the creation. Not sure how this will play into my art show plans, but I really liked chewing on that thought, so it might be a seed of something.

2. Quilt lettering. I’ve been interested & dabbling in quilt lettering for many years, but I finally have the space, energy and knowledge to dive fully in. I have a bunch of projects in mind and am also planning some materials & possibly workshops to share with you all, too. It feels really good to fully commit to something I’ve been dabbling in for so long!

3. Syllabus-style making. This term is something I made up to describe the way I want to approach my sewing this year. Looking back, I see several very clear phases of sewing styles in myself, and I’m ready for another shift. When I first taught myself to sew I remember incredulously thinking, why would I ever care about the inside of a garment? Who has patience for that? Why would it matter as long as you have something wearable? Fast forward to now, I design my own patterns, and I obsessively think about the finishes and construction methods of every garment that comes across my path. This year, I want to focus on a couple of different themes and sew or draft several similar patterns to explore specific design features. I also want to do some historical research on these themes and really dive deep into the geeky realm of sewing. So, buckle up for that I guess!

4. Sky Gazing. I’m tracking how many nights I make it out to stargaze this month, and I bought my husband the Cloud Collectors Handbook as a Christmas present with the goal of making cloud spotting a family hobby. I don’t smoke, but the constant horrors of living through a second Trump administration demand some form of readily accessible nervous system regulation, so this is my attempt at a symbolic nicotine patch for the year.

5. Ignoring Small Irritations. In the last year or so, I noticed I’m on edge more than I’d like to be, for mostly understandable reasons that are outside of my control. At the same time, I think it’s easy to let small things pile up, and I found myself having bigger reactions to things that didn’t deserve my energy or brainspace. I’m officially in my unbothered era now. Running late (an enormous personal pet peeve of mine)? Who cares. Someone’s Instagram stories worrying or stressing me out? Mute ‘em. Timelines? Never heard of them. This could also be it’s own #, but I think the antidote to a lot of this is to focus that wasted energy on community building. Inviting friends over, even though the house is a mess. Texting or calling just because. Scheduling the next hangout before the current one ends. Dropping off a sweet treat on the stoop. Making an effort to get to local community events and spaces.

6. Business hours. Related to # 5’s irritations, I’m going to have official business hours for my sewing pattern business. This will include turning on Instagram from Friday to Sunday when I decide to return from my break. I didn’t realise until taking this break how taxing being potentially needed and accessible was! I care very deeply about my patterns and making sure that people who sew them feel excited and supported sewing them. When people tag me in their makes or send me a DM about troubleshooting printing, I feel like I have to respond urgently and with great care. At the same time, I was also trying to use Instagram to connect with my community, get inspiration, zone out and regulate from a tough day. Trying to balance those two things was creating an inner friction inside that made me cranky whenever I opened the app, which is exactly the opposite of what I want! This break (it’s only been 10 days so far) has been such a relief. I miss a lot of creators and friends, but the peace of mind has been a gift. I’m looking forward to finding a better balance.

7. Business Lady. I mentioned this in a previous post, but learning to sew and Spaghetti Western Sewing has drastically changed my life in such a profound way. I still have trouble wrapping my head around the reality that people not only sew my patterns, but like them enough to buy them and often come back to buy more patterns! The ultimate dream! For a long time, I just kind of pretended SWS was a silly little hobby when it was always a full-on business. This year, I’ll finally have dedicated weekly time to work on SWS stuff. I’ll be paying myself for that day of work, which feels wild and definitely illegal (it’s not, obviously). I’ll be proactive on all the admin things I’ve just been avoiding until now, which requires me to put on my business lady pants.

8. Fun Collaborations. Due to the previously mentioned SWS day of the work week, I now have more capacity for new kinds of creativity! Kara from Small Museum refers to other pattern designers as her colleagues, and I think that is such a beautiful framing! All too often, sew-stagram likes to frame indie pattern designing as a competition or something that can be quantifiable (ex: who has the best elastic waist pant?) when in reality, it’s all art and vibes, baby! Different strokes for different folks. There are some designers and artists that I’d love to learn from and create with and there have been some initial chats, so I’m very hopeful and excited about where this could lead!

9. Chainstitch machine. Through the amazing Instagram sewing community, I was able to connect with an extremely cool person who let me come to their studio and gave me an intro to vintage chianstitching machines and let me try sewing on one of theirs. At the time, I was on maternity leave and didn’t have childcare to be able to pursue this anymore, but I can’t wait to pursue this more in 2026.

10. Archives. This one is fully extracurricular. I just want to learn more about archives and visit as many as possible. Last year, I visited Aftel Archive of Curious Scents and the Eames Archive, and both experiences blew my mind. I love anyone who has in depth hyper specific knowledge and wants to share it. I don’t even care what topic it is. If you are excited about it and have a collection, I want to hear about it. I also want to learn about historical archives, archive lore and the practice of archiving as well. My cousin (a school librarian) and I joke that our dream summer (we both work in education) would be to find a special interest and/or mystery of some sort and travel around to tiny archives searching for information. And by joke, I mean I just need to wait until my kids are older and we can responsibly drag them along with us to do this.

    I’m curious, what fun stuff do you have on your 2026 Manifesto? Any archives you desperately need to tell me about? I’m all ears!

TLDW (Too Long Didn’t Watch):

1. Kids pant pattern update

2. New knit cast on (Weekend Hat)

3. New Spaghetti Western pattern in progress

4. Honeygirl Shirts

5. Library tote

6. Making log

I worked on this quilt off and on for all of 2025,

but the true beginning can be traced back to a tattoo of a girl drowning in her own tears with Chiquitita lyrics surrounding her. I desperately searched for this image I stumbled across sometime in the mid 2010s, but can’t find it for the life of me. I can still picture it perfectly, though, and vividly remember filing away Chiquitita lyrics as something to creatively circle back to. Fast forward to January 2025, and it was time to pull the trigger. I already knew which lyrics I wanted to use from the song, which is actually quite hard because there are so many good ones! I used the All Well Studio Patchwork Alphabet Zine and a spreadsheet I have made and used for my other quilt lettering projects. I really started to enjoy patchwork lettering once I came up with some systems to batch cut and sew each letter, as well as a ziploc baggie/clear tote organization and storage system. This is by far my most ambitious project yet, with 49 letters.

I decided to invest in an XL stripology ruler to make cutting all these tiny pieces bearable, and I’m so glad I did. It was a really great motivator and a tool I used multiple times throughout this quilt and will continue to use in the future.

I knew that I wanted to make an entirely yellow quilt top using light yellow and ochre for the lettering, and a checkered flower fabric I used as the backing for my previous large quilt. I dug in deep and did some color sleuthing in the wild (Thanks Home Depot paint aisle) and via the Instagram hive mind for the perfect butter yellow. I used the images below as guides.

I eventually found a perfect light butter yellow cotton at Joanne Fabrics, but there were rumors of Joanne’s days being numbered due to filing for bankruptcy, and I was nervous about buying fabric that could potentially not be sourced again if I ran out or made a major design pivot or error. I brought a swatch of the fabric from Joanne and the checked flower fabric to Stonemountain & Daughter for further research.

After lots of aisle pacing and agony, I found the two yellows that worked with the floral fabric I already had: Kona Cotton Maize and Cotton Couture Gold. I wasn’t totally sold on Kona Maize to start. Side by side, I still preferred the one from Joanne, color-wise, but for quality and availability, Maize seemed like a better option. In retrospect, I’m so glad I didn’t go with the fabric from Joanne (RIP), and I’m fully in love with Kona Maize. I’ve already used it in another project, and it’ll be my yellow of choice for a long, long time.

I started working on the lettering while I continued to puzzle over what I wanted the rest of the quilt top to look like.

I looked at a lot of reference images in my Pinterest and Instagram saves for ideas. I knew I wanted some sort of large-medium scale checkered pattern since the lettering is so intricate and time-consuming. Doing any other kind of block would probably be the death of me. I also knew I wanted a lot of the flower check fabric to show, which meant it should be a full square in the checker piecing. These three images ended up influencing the design of my quilt the most.

I had this image saved on Pinterest and was able to find the original post on Instagram. I really liked the small twist on a checkered pattern and eventually decided to do the same layout with the floral checked fabric squares and stripes for the half-square triangles.

This post really convinced me that a tonal quilt can be dynamic and interesting.

I couldn’t resist replicating the scallops from Farm and Folk’s quilt. Such an easy and interesting way to add a border. I also thought it supported the ABBA/60s/Swedish theme well.

Before I could get very much farther on this quilt,

I gave birth to my third child, which was exciting, unexpectedly early, chaotic, and included a three-week stay in the NICU. That and, of course, having a newborn pretty much brought all progress on this quilt to a screeching halt. While quilt progress was on break, life wasn’t, and the lyrics to Chiquitita were sung so often in our house that my 5 and 7-year-old often belt it out around the house even now. I made use of the forced break to let the ideas marinate and solidify. Although it was an involuntary pause, I think the final design was better for it. I did a lot of sketching and plotting in my notebook to satisfy my hunger to quilt while I was low on free time.

I carved out some sewing time in July and finished the lettering. I also made final decisions on the checkerboard layout. I was able to find Svenberry Petit Basics in colorway wheat, which was close enough to the ochre color in the other fabrics to be the striped half of HSTs. I considered overdyeing the fabric to get the stripes a bit darker, but I didn’t want to run the risk of ruining the fabric, and also didn’t think the white background would look good in any of the colors that would make the yellow deeper.

In August and September, I finished piecing the rest of the quilt top in bits and pieces of stolen time. Early October, I sent her off to my longarmer with a yellow gingham backing fabric. I am hopelessly devoted to wool batting for all my quilting projects, so I order batting and ship it to my longarmer’s address. Let me know if you want to hear me ramble on about wool batting, I love it SO MUCH. I ended up choosing the Posy Patch Pantogram, which really locked in the 60’s Swedish vibe for me.

I love sending my quilts to get longarmed because there is nothing quite like opening that box to see something you spent months and months on in a new, upgraded version of itself. All the sudden my dinky little fabric collage has transformed into a Quilt. It is quite expensive (Rightfully so! The skill, machine maintenence and workmanship of long arming is impressive), but my greatest hope is that these quilts remain in my family for generations, so it’s worth it to me to have professional quilting. I’d love to learn how to use a longarm machine myself, rent some time on one, and take on the challenge of hand quilting some projects in the future. I recently talked to a sales representative at my local sewing shop about the future of machine quilting and learned that manufacturers are blending longarm features into high-end home sewing machines, which is interesting but a whole other conversation to fall into.

I got my quilt back at the beginning of November, but unfortunately was in the thick of hosting the Hurry Home x Rue Sew Along and had no time to sew the binding to my precious Chiquitita quilt. I also hadn’t decided on binding fabric yet, but I had leftover small and large-scale gingham from the top and backing, but not quite enough of either, so I decided to go scrappy. I also had a significant amount of wool batting left over because I was just over twin-size batting dimensions and needed to buy a queen-size. I ended up being able to use the excess batting for my Hurry Home x Rue coat and still have enough for probably 1-2 Pearl Headscarves, so in my min,d these projects will always be sisters.

Finally, in mid-December, I finished Hurry Home x Rue and dove straight into binding. I’m linking my all-time favorite video for quilt binding here. I’ve watched it a zillion times and really enjoy this technique. I lovingly hand-stitched the binding to finish with a little “help” from my 5-year-old, which was very sweet and also agonizingly slow so close to finishing. I made the last stitch the morning of December 31st. It felt rather poetic to start this quilt in the first days of January and finish it on the last day of the year. Our family did our inaugural magic video to welcome our new quilt to the family, and have been piled up under it since.

Let me know if you have any questions or if I missed anything. If you made it this far, you’re a real one!