Just The Attention We Needed, But Not How We Wanted It To Happen
Happy Monday Everyone!
I hope you had a nice relaxing weekend and got to enjoy the quiet time.
Today, I want to discuss the silver lining in this new Coronavirus world. The silver lining is that mask and ppe sewing has brought some much needed and well deserved attention to our amazing fabric industry. Of course, this wasn’t the way that we wanted our industry to gain positive press, but beggars can’t be choosers and we will take it however we can get it. As they say, “All publicity is good publicity.”
Over the years, me, my companies and so many others in the industry have put much effort forth into trying to stop the number of quilters from going down from its peak. Those efforts pale in comparison to what’s going on now. As the expression goes, “Sometime it’s better to be lucky than good.” I guess we got very lucky on one front. I am definitely not complaining.
With all this being said, now the real question is how we as business owners, consumers and shop owners are going to permanently convert all these new sewers to be quilters and hoarders for life? I don’t think I have the answer to that at this moment, but rather I am going to call out all of my fabric reseller partners to use this opportunity to broaden their local reach and do everything they can to welcome this new found audience.
This is a challenge that we all need to embrace right away while the iron is hot and not miss out on this enormous. What are you going to do to help feed the flames? What ideas do you have to help convert these temporary quilters to quilting addicts? Please share your ideas in the comments section and let’s work together to make this stick and keep the spotlight on the most amazing industry in the world.
Thanks familia! Have a great week.
Sewing Is In The Rise Scott
16 Comments
Eileen Reed
I came to this page while trying to determine where your fabric is manufactured. I really love your fabric lines but would love it even more if made in America. I have been sewing since I was 12 and am now almost 72. I used a lot of my stash to make masks and I am eager to go fabric shopping for more fabric. I think, even for us old quilters, to increase interest in sewing and quilting you must increase presentations on YouTube. I have really enjoyed the sessions By Annie using Tula Pink fabrics and Kaffe. Thanks. Eileen Reed
eileenmcreed@gmail.com
Scott Fortunoff
Hi Eileen,
Thanks for the message and kind words. Unfortunately it isn’t feasible to print in the US.
thanks.
Scott
Gay Cooper
I know the need for masks has been great, however there is a need that isn’t being addressed!
Our medical personal are wearing their scrubs home and stripping in the garage so they don’t carry the germs into their homes. (Car now has been contaminated!). For those that change before they leave the hospital they are carrying their clothes home in a trash bag.
In Europe sewers are making scrub bags so scrubs can be taken off, put in the bag and tossed in the wash without removing the scrubs from the bag.
The nurses I have given them to love them!
I have started a drive to get all medical personnel 2 bags each. (Looking at 400 bags for our local hospital) I have written a pattern, and made a tutorial. I will share!
Simple sewing projects give confidence and feeling of success.
Gay Cooper
Sew Uptown
Bartlesville , OK
Emily
I’m not in the industry, “just” a hobby quilter, but I’ve been thinking about the resurgence of sewing a lot over the past few weeks. One thing that stands out to me as I think about all the people who are just coming to sewing or coming back to it through making masks is that they are responding to a need. That may be one connection, to offer or showcase all the ways that sewists & quilters respond to needs in their communities and the world–everything from making place mats for meals on wheels to pillowcase dresses for youngsters in impoverished nations to quilt drives for those who lost everything to natural disasters.
On the flip side, I admit that I don’t enjoy making masks. I’ve been doing it, sure, but honestly not at the output that I *could* be. Because I have limited free time (this stay at home order is not a break for me in any way) I don’t want to use it all doing something I don’t enjoy. And there’s the reality sewing is my stress relief, which I desperately need right now, and making masks increases the stress rather than decreases it. So there is also room to show the new-found sewists that mask-making is the utilitarian side of a rewarding pastime.
So I don’t really have answers, but I do hope that some people will say in 10 years or more “I started sewing/quilting/textile art when there was a need for home-sewn masks during the Covid-19 crisis.”
Scott Fortunoff
Hi Anne,
I don’t let that stuff get to me. It’s kind of the nature of social media. Sometimes it brings out the ugly, but it bounces of me. More of a nuisance than anything.
Scott
Brenda Ricketts
My goal is to offer more Kits this year to help keep my newbies sewing once they return to work, less time to think about it all just buy the complete kit..
Katie Coventry
When you have scraps of fabrics left from mask making make a quilt or wall, table runner as a remembrance of all the fabric you cut up.
Bonnie Griffin
My shop is closed so I have been selling fabric from home. For the most part my newfound customers have been young women that haven’t quilted and are just sewing masks. I have been using this opportunity to educate them about fabric, thread, notions. Explaining the difference between Walmart and a quilt shop or as we say getting what you pay for. On return visits they are thanking me for sharing my knowledge with them. I have them signing up for our email list and liking our Facebook page. They are excited about the chance to take classes when we return in the fall and reopen. I am excited to bring some youth into our industry.
Lori Finney/Prairie Tradition
Suggested making masks was the perfect way to practice basic sewing skills in getting ready to make a quilt. Donated over 1,500 mask kits sewn on my long arm. Inviting those who finished the kits to an open house in my quilt studio post-Covid. Includes quilt show with quilts as old as 1850’s and many new examples of modern fabric designers like Tula Pink and Kaffe Fassett. Encourage and inspire!
Leslie Salley
Thank you Scott for giving us so much information about the fabric we have been buying for years.I never really thought about who may have designed it-just bought what was pretty or different.Now I think about these designers,searching out their final resulting art work in my favorite quilt stores.In that search I have found new quilt stores of hardworking ,unique owners.Each of these stores has a pulse, character of its’ own. I have been busy making masks-being a retired nurse,I have a love/hate relationship with them. It is fun filling a need for others.What will be next?Quilt for my Aunt with a lung tumor who just finished radiation.The fabric choice is important. Thank you.?
Terri Dirk
I think inviting these people over to sew to a home studio (when this is all over) creates a friendly atmosphere. They would be able to see the community of quilting. This friendly time could encourage them to try new techniques and have people on hand to answer questions. As soon as they feel part of the ‘family’ of course they will want to know where we get our fabric. Yay!! Shopping trips to local quilt shops!!!
Jennifer Armentrout
To get them hooked on sewing, I am showing them fun fabrics, quick projects, new textiles like cork and sashiko, reintroducing cross-stitching because you know it is the new thing. Bright fabrics, fun prints, easy sewing – they are converts. It is not grandmas quilting world anymore.
The younger set wants to make bags, art quilts, slow stitching. Change it up, reintroduce. What doesn’t work one week, works well 6 weeks later. It is crazy!
Live videos are helping. Constant social media. Personal connections. It is what I did to stay in business and have our best month by 10x in April. I hope all this keeps them coming – I am asking them what they are going to make after the masks. They say Halloween quilts.
Debra Freeman
So, i have always been curious in quilting, so when as to makeask, i decided to gett scraps of the ones i made to make a quilt. With that said, it probably won’t be bigger than a lap quilt, but it will be a start. No design in mind other than the satisfaction that i was able to help in a time of need.
Ruth Davis
Even Governor Cuomo said the other day that if you gave him a sewing machine, he could make a PPE! I think the mask making converted a lot of former sewers to come back.(I’ve heard a lot of complaints about old, non-working machines) as well as newbies who have watched all the YouTube instructions and now want to be sewers. My mask makers have even said that they are tired of their scraps and really want jazzy fabrics for the masks they are making. Many are buying fabric by theme again. Can’t give away sewing machines, but fat quarters and elastic have helped a lot.
Lydia Overby
PPE/Mask sewing takes basic skills. When I began quilting I started with the basics. Simple patterns made with beautiful fabrics. Thirty years later I love challenging patterns and piecing, but I believe extraordinary designs can sometimes be intimidating to beginners.
1. I think showcasing simple designs made with beautiful, quality fabrics will inspire creativity… and likely a fabric obsession like most quilters have. (I recently found a gorgeous 3 yard cut of Blank from the early 2000’s in my stash. 😀 )
2. Teach folks how to choose colors and prints that compliment each other. Pulling fabrics from one line is great but LQS’s don’t always purchase the whole line. I love “cross-blending” fabrics from various lines.
And 3. Consider selecting a group of Quilter-newbies much like your Brand Ambassador’s, perhaps offer some small projects, on-line instructions, and have them post their progress.
Best Regards!
Quilting Jeannie
It has been my experience that Quilter’s, seamstresses, and sewers in general have been quick to step up to the needs of their community. I am proud of their efforts to help their communities. And proud to be counted as one.