My dear readers, I’m starting a mailing list for those of you who would be interested in testing patterns for us in the future.

There’s no commitment involved to sign up, it’s just a way for me to contact you. When there are new patterns that I need tested, I’ll send a note out to the list to find volunteers.

How testing works is this: When you volunteer for a pattern, I’ll send you a pattern before it’s released, along with complete illustrated instructions. They’re not in a cute booklet format, but they’re complete. You sew up the design in a certain time frame, and fill out some questionnaires about the experience and any problems you encountered, things you liked, or general thoughts.

Interested in being on the list? Just fill out some info below:

New here? Try subscribing to the rss feed, or subscribe by email in the right sidebar.

Last week, I mentioned a lot of the challenges in starting your own business. Now let’s talk about what I think is the single biggest reward: you get to design your dream business from the ground up.

How many other opportunities do you get in life to really take control of every element of how something works? It is a real blessing for anyone, but I think especially for the creative person. Because it really is an act of enormous creativity.

Before you start working on your business, before you start researching or developing products or even writing a business plan, I’d really encourage you to step back and think about what your dream business would be like. What qualities would it have? How would other people describe it? What aspects of it are most important? How is it different, and better, than all the other similar businesses? Really let your imagination run wild and consider what would make it perfect for you.

You can write these ideas down in a list format, or write a few paragraphs to create a thumbnail sketch of what your dream business is like.

Next, think about your own role in the business, and what you want to get from it. Think about yourself leading this business in five years, and what would make you happy. Your dream could be to have your own studio space and wonderful people working with you. Or it could be to have flexible time to spend with your family. Everyone is different, and we all have plenty of dreams other than “make enough money.”

Once you’ve spent some time brainstorming, it should be easy to distill these into two sets of goals: goals for your business, and goals for yourself. I find it important to separate these, because they’re two pretty different sets of goals that may or may not overlap. For example, my goals for my dream business were to have a pattern company that produced beautiful & flattering designs, were beautifully and thoughtfully packaged, had terrific instructions, and inspired people to sew. But my personal goals were to spend my time designing & creating, to have enough time and resources to travel more, to have flexible time so I can go for a bike ride or bake a cake when I feel like it, to be able to collaborate with other creative people, and to have a great workspace someday.

Because you’ve really allowed yourself to fantasize, your goals will probably be pretty ambitious, but they’ll also be the right goals for you, and that is what makes all the difference. You should hold on to these goals: They will be a great foundation for planning, but they’ll also be essential later on. When you’re working hard, feeling frustrated, or just unsure of yourself, it is incredibly satisfying to look back at your goals and see how far you’ve progressed.

{image above: blossom pattern by le suede}

{image above via vain and vapid}

The other day, I was having coffee with a woman who has been making custom clothing for quite a long time. She told me how difficult it was for her to get women to take their own honest measurements. “Women hate taking their measurements!” she declared, and told me about bridesmaid dresses she’d constructed for women who lived far away, only to find out there’d been a 4 inch discrepancy between their real and declared waist size!

I’ve even heard small, thin women say that they do not want to know their own measurements. Doesn’t that seem a little… odd?

Let’s face it, you need to know your body to get a good fit, and that starts with accurate measurements. I’ll admit, I’ve had some problems with this in the past when measuring myself. If you have a little fat in the area you’re measuring, or even muscle, it’s hard to know how tight to pull the tape measure. Combine this with a little wishful thinking (I mean, who wants to read 29″ on the tape measure if you can pull it a little tighter and believe it’s 28″?), and you have a recipe for inaccuracies.

That’s why I like this new tape measure I just purchased, called the MyoTape. You pull out the tape measure, lock it into place, press a button, and it automatically adjusts it to the same tension every time. I bought mine for fitness training (I’m on a quest to build up some muscles), but it would be just as awesome for the home sewer.

They’re only about 5 bucks on Amazon, and I really like how easy it is to use. All in all, a neat little doohickey.

A few weeks back I wrote a post which served both to introduce a book entitled Make Do and Mend and to give a general overview of the deprivations effecting the civilian population, particularly in the UK, during the Second World War. Many people took the time to add some fascinating comments regarding this subject, I was so pleased to see that my fascination with the experiences of this time is shared by other modern-day sewers. I would like to draw your attention to a particularly dedicated and knowledgeable blogger, Susannah, who has set herself an amazing challenge she has entitled ‘Fashion on the Ration’. This is her attempt to spend one year shopping and sewing within the British wartime clothing ration imposed in 1941. I, for one, am very excited about following her progress and reading her observations throughout this challenge.

It was in this spirit that I decided to (literally) take a leaf out of the Make Do and Mend campaign and attempt to darn a hole that had appeared in one of my favourite pairs of socks. It really annoys me how quickly most thin mass-produced socks develop holes where the back of my ankle rubs against my shoe, and I was determined to get a bit more wear out of this particular pair. So, just like any self-respecting woman during WW2 already familiar with a needle and thread would have, I set about teaching myself to darn. I decided to use the techniques issued by the government and reproduced in the Make Do and Mend book (which can be seen above and below).

In true ‘making do’ style, I (in hindsight unwisely) chose to use three strands of embroidery thread to darn with. (This is because the trip to my local haberdasher without the necessary Spanish or Catalan vocab for ‘darning wool’ left me empty handed!) Well, as you can see from the image below, things started off reasonably well, but shortly after this point they swiftly went downhill! I was really hoping to be able to illustrate this post with an image of an exquisitely executed fresh piece of darning. But alas, though the sock has received a stay of execution of perhaps one or two more wears, a lasting and ultimately successful darn did not materialise!  

Lessons learned:

• putting something behind the hole, other than your fingers, whilst darning is essential to achieve the correct tension (my mum has something for this that looks like a wooden mushroom).
• decent darning wool or ‘mending’ as they have called it here apparently cannot be substituted.
• darning is harder than it looks!

Of course, the type of wooly socks these instructions were probably designed for are very different from my thin modern kind, but I’m not convinced  my socks cannot be salvaged! If anyone has attempted, and perhaps even mastered, the art of darning and has some advice, please let us know!

I have to admit, I hesitated a little bit before writing this post to tell you about all the wonderful trims at Dishy Vintage. I almost wanted to save this source for myself. But that would be selfish.

Personally, I am very particular about lace. I do not like to sew with scratchy nylon lace and much prefer very fine, soft vintage laces. I have amassed quite a collection in fact, and it seems to be growing day by day.

I just bought several from Dishy Vintage and am completely in love with them! I cannot wait to use them on some super secret projects.

The photo above is a gorgeous wide net lace.

This is a lovely net lace.

Some gorgeous chemical lace remnants.

Adorable red and white seam binding (yes, that’s seam binding, not ribbon!)

A pretty net lace with roses

Vintage embroidered organza trim!

Go check out Dishy Vintage for lots more beautiful bits for your sewing.

Fellow Portlanders, if you’re interested in making the Rooibos dress but think you might like a little extra teaching help for it, my new friend and fellow pattern designer Shelly will be teaching a class at Bolt using this pattern! It was just posted and she’s already had people signing up, so if you’re interested, hop over to the Bolt website for details!

I found this dress at one of my favorite vintage shops, Dear Golden. I’ll admit that the color isn’t for me (and I adore pink), but those pockets!

I’m completely enamored with the stitched bows. I captured a close up shot for you. I’m not an embroidery expert, but it looks to me like some kind of heavy coarse thread. I suppose you’d stitch the outline of the bow, then fill it in with the loops. Very very pretty.

What are sewing blogs for if not to share our triumphs and tribulations? If you follow my personal blog, you may have seen a skirt (pictured above) I made back in April 2009. It was a simple A-line shape made in red poly-cotton twill. I carefully cut out some shapes from scraps of my mum’s curtains and applied them to the skirt with a zigzag stitch. A simple and effective way to turn a ‘meh’ garment into a ‘wow’ garment I thought. Job done.

Except that was not the end of the story. These lace panels soon began to rip after a couple of wears, even before I considered laundering the skirt. As the rips got worse, I eventually had to come out of the self-denial that it still looked ok. I really did love this skirt and the acceptance came only after a polite and timely observational remark from my boyfriend! The only thing to do was to unpick them and apply a different form of decoration. I was pretty gutted as I loved the effect of the delicate silhouetted shapes against strong background. Recently I have been day-dreaming of trying something similar again. However, I refuse to be burnt a second time! This time I’m on the hunt for lace appliqués that should stand up to both wear and washing better than my DIY version did. Let me share with you some of the most special lace appliqués you can pick up on etsy:

Imagine this cute pair of hearts applied to the shoulders of a jacket or blouse, on patch pockets or even the curved yoke of the Ceylon dress.

How stunning would this neck piece look on the simplest navy or black shift dress?

For something even more whimsical, these black butterflies would look enchanting fluttering across a dress such as the Eclair or Chantilly made in a pale shade.

I’m not too sure quite what I would do with these incredible cream medallions, but I think it would involve red.

Once again, I think this bouquet applique would work best of the world’s least fussy dress to avoid any residual bridal vibe.

And last but not least, my own personal favourite, love birds! Have fun with these, fellow sewers, but please leave one of the sets of birds for me! How would you use this type of decoration?

Check it out guys, there’s a little blurb about Colette Patterns in the latest issue of Bust! It’s just a wee blurb, but I’ve been reading Bust since I was a teenager, so it’s pretty neat to see my name in there.

If you don’t read Bust and you’re in a place where you can get a hold of it, I highly recommend it for a fun magazine fix! How often do you read a magazine and actually feel better about yourself rather than worse? It’s great to see the smart, independent, fun women I know reflected in the magazine, and that’s why I’ve always admired Bust.

By the way, the accompanying photo is of the lovely Roxanne, not me!

Chances are pretty good that you’ve dreamed about starting your own business at some point in your life. Running your own show is attractive in so many ways, especially for us creative types. Maybe you want more control over how you spend your time; maybe you need more creative fulfillment in your career; maybe you see a huge gap in what’s out there, and you think you could fill it.

All three of those were true for me. When I decided to start Colette Patterns, I was working in what I thought would be my dream job. After I finished graduate school, I’d been hired by the company I most wanted to work for, a high-profile silicon valley company with a mission I believed in and a reputation for treating its employees very well. Not only that, I was doing work that had the potential to really help people in their day-to-day lives. It was great, and I learned a ton.

But after a few years, I realized that it wasn’t meeting all of my needs. I spent hours every day commuting. Most of my time at work was spent in meetings or writing reports. Worst of all for me, I felt like a lot of my talents were going to waste in the hustle and bustle of a large corporation. So I decided to try something else, something completely different.

Maybe you’re in a similar situation. My main impetus was the belief that life is too short to waste my time and abilities. I knew instinctively that I could do better and make myself happier, and that’s what I set out to do.

That said, you should probably take a good look at your motivations before investing too much, and think hard about the downsides to working for yourself. There are some obvious, practical challenges that probably spring to mind immediately. For example, you might wonder if you can make enough money to live on. Or if you’re in the US, you might have to think about buying your own health insurance. But there are other pitfalls you may not consider when painting a picture of your new venture. Here are some of the questions you might ask yourself (many of which I never thought about before starting this whole crazy small business thing):

• Are you able to manage heaps of small, mundane tasks?
• Can you deal effectively with incompetent or dishonest people that might crop up? If not, do you have someone who can help you? (I’ve had some doozies and I’m not very good at yelling at people, but luckily I have someone to help me manage hairy situations)
• Will thinking about work all the time be too taxing for you? Do you have ways you can cope with that?
• Are you willing to sometimes work long hours?
• Can you deal with feedback in a constructive, fair way?
• Are you excited enough about your business idea that you can imagine working on it every day for years to come?

None of this is meant to discourage you. I honestly think that if you’re interested in starting your own business, it’s something you should try at least once. Personally, it’s made me enormously happy, and I know it has that potential for a lot of people.

And if you’re not ready to make the commitment yet, don’t fret! That may mean that you just give yourself more time to plot and scheme, or it could mean you start with an ultra-small side project and don’t focus immediately on making it bigger. There’s no need to jump into it until you’re ready. Don’t pressure yourself.

With a passion for your business comes a big sense of responsibility, and that can be a lot to deal with. It’s great to be in control of every aspect, but it can also be tough. Later, I’ll write about some concrete strategies I have for dealing with that.

In the meantime: welcome to your own crazy adventure, it will be fun and you will learn more than you ever have. To paraphrase a friend of ours who works for himself, “I’m working harder than I ever have in my life, and I’m loving every minute of it.”

{image above: vintage sheet music by finsbry}