I try to sit down every so often to figure out where I’m headed with Mythic Seam and make adjustments. The beginning of the year seemed like the perfect time to do just that!
Just a few months ago I launched my brand new website with my very own storefront and I’d really like to keep moving forward. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking of what’s working and what’s not. What I want to spend more time focusing on and what is taking away from my time.
The big thing I want to focus on this year is making more quilt patterns. I was only able to put out two quilt patterns last year and I really want to do a lot more. I have so many ideas floating around in my head that I’m trying to get down onto paper and it doesn’t always come easy. Sometimes I have this great idea, but getting it to work as a quilt pattern that’s easy to follow can be quite the challenge. Fortunately the challenge is the part I love most!
You may have noticed that I haven’t been making traditional quilt designs. I really love taking the idea of an art quilt and turning it into a pattern that is simple enough that even a beginner could make it.
It’s also pretty hard to miss, but I also do a ton of dyeing. I feel there is a significant lack of patterns designed with dyeing in mind. I think often people see pretty dyed fabric and immediately follow that up with “Yeah, but what would I make with it?” And to be honest, when I started dyeing I thought the same thing! That’s where my second category of patterns come into play: my Dye + Quilting patterns. They come with full dyeing instructions to make your own fabric that you can then immediately use in a quilt! (Of course you can always make the quilt without dyeing if you love the pattern but dyeing isn’t quite your thing.) But figuring out which dyes to use and getting the right mix of dyes is time consuming.
So this year I’ll be dedicating more time to designing quilts and creating patterns. But a person only has so much time in a day, and that means that I’ll have to cut back elsewhere.
Up until now I’ve been making an effort to make sure I put up a new blog post each week. Unfortunately I’m not going to be able to keep up with that frequency anymore. I’m not going to be completely stopping – it’s just going to happen more organically instead. As I work on projects that have something worth writing about, I’ll post about it. I wish I could say how often that’s going to be but I really don’t even know myself.
There will be a brief dry spell at the beginning of this year because I’m currently working on about four new pattern designs and until I start actively dyeing and sewing I won’t have much of interest to talk about. I want to focus on quality, not quantity this year!
However I don’t want you to miss out when new stuff comes out!
I have given it a lot of thought and I still don’t plan on sending out emails or newsletters. I once caught an informal poll where the poster was asking what people thought about newsletters and the answers were a resounding “I hate them,” or “I only subscribe for free stuff.” That pretty much matches my personal feelings on newsletters too. I’m on a few lists and I can’t think of the last time I actually opened one.
Things have changed a lot in the last 10 years and with social media being as popular as it is now, I think there are better ways to connect with people than email newsletters.
I personally post to Facebook to let people know when new blog posts go up. I also post a lot of the in process stuff on Instagram, so if you like seeing where I’m at with new designs, check me out there! You can also check me out on Pinterest!
If you have ideas on how you would like to be contacted about new blog posts or pattern releases, I’d love to hear them!
I have a feeling this is going to be a pretty big year…
