I have gotten emails on a regular basis for years, literally, from folks who would like to make the Snack Bandolier from my tutorial for sale at craft shows and street fairs, or through their online shop.  I’ve had notes from folks who are Occupational Therapists who say this design is great for their clients, learning to work with their hands and with smaller objects.  Moms love it for anything from snacks to collections.  Teachers love it for school trips and outings.  Geeks love it because it reminds them of their Chewbacca bandolier from their youth.  It has gotten so much great attention, and I’d love to see kids all over using it and enjoying it.  After getting so many requests from folks who have their own shop, I have wanted to put together some sort of license for them to use this design in a way that would benefit everyone who loves the Snack Bandolier.  After plenty of thinking and bouncing ideas around, I think I’ve found it!

It would have been simplest, of course, to grant blanket permission for anyone anywhere to make the Snack Bandolier and sell it.  Doing that prevents me from knowing WHO and WHERE they’re being made, though, and for every request I get from makers who would like to sew and sell the Bandolier, I get another from someone–often a magazine or online aggregator–who would like to purchase one ready-made or who would like to know if I manufacture them.  (I don’t.)  Granting an open permission to make the Snack Bandolier doesn’t allow me to keep a running record of who is doing the making, and where they’re being sold; I really believe in keeping small businesses in business by building community around them, and in keeping as much of our spending local as we’re able, so I’d vastly prefer to send someone to a nearby maker when I can.  Can’t do that if you don’t know who they are!

I could ask individuals to pay PER Snack Bandolier–but not only is it a giant headache to keep track of, it can also really cut into a small maker’s bottom line and subtract a chunk of their margin to charge per piece like that.  Having been in the small-scale manufacture game myself, I recognize the on-going tension between setting a price that the public will pay and setting a price that is reflective of the value of your time and the beauty of your work (I could go on and on about this particular topic, but I’ll insert right now that I think 85% of you are charging way too little for the things you’re selling).  Any single expense over and above the most basic necessities affects that margin and increases that maker/buyer tension, and I’d love to avoid adding to that.

So I’ve come up with a way that makes sense to me, to support small makers while at the same time allowing recognition for the work I did in developing the Snack Bandolier: I’ve developed a 10-page PDF pattern based on the original design I posted in 2011.  I’m making it available for $1 to anyone who would like to sell the Snack Bandolier as a cottage maker.  The pattern includes a limited agreement between the maker and Whipstitch enabling you to make as many Bandoliers as your little fingers will permit, in exchange for crediting me/Whipstitch Industries with the design.  By making this itty bitty purchase, I am able to track the buyers, which enables every maker to have their shop or brand listed on the blog here so that buyers can locate you and purchase from you.  I’m not looking to make money here–I’m looking to build a great resource for these makers and for the community.  All I ask from each maker who uses the pattern to make these to sell is a brief mention of where the idea was born so that buyers can find Whipstitch, and so that I can build here a list of folks heading to makers who have Snack Bandoliers in their shops.

I think most of the craft community really value one another’s ideas, and want to honor and recognize the time and effort and originality that go into the work that each person in the community contributes.  I think there is a sincere and valid desire amongst people to acknowledge the creations of others, while still looking to find a way that we can all benefit symbiotically and in collaboration with one another.  Most of us are really seeking to find ways that we can do business with integrity and without having to give up the camaraderie and mutual respect and support that are important to us, to find ways to compensate people within the craft community for their ideas and their time and their efforts.  By taking the content of the original tutorial, expanding it and creating a printable document that has added value to you as a maker, I’m hoping to experiment with ways as a community for us to share our ideas, work with one another, and all benefit from that relationship.

You can also purchase a copy if you’d just like to have a printed PDF on hand for your own use!  It includes all the original text and instructions, every step-by-step photo in full color, and most of the larger “beauty” shots from the original tutorial, along with some additional information not included in the initial design.  At the rock-bottom price of $1, it’s a nice way to have a permanent document for your own use, even if you’re not planning to manufacture, and the cost becomes simply a compensation for the hours I spent putting the PDF together.

Here’s a quick sample view of one page of the pattern as it appears in the new PDF document:

I hope you all love the idea and will make a zillion of these for the coming spring and summer craft fair season!

SNACK BANDOLIER PATTERN & LICENSE

To purchase a copy of the Snack Bandolier pattern and the license that comes with it, simply click the button above. You’ll receive a PDF document in full color via email within 24 hours of your purchase; instant download is in progress, and when it’s available, this button will be replaced with one that permits instant download. Thanks so much for supporting independent design!

About a zillion years ago, I roped myself into a postage stamp quilt project.  It was when our littlest was really little; in about two months, she turns three, and there is the slimmest chance this project will be done by then, God willing.  It has been tremendously time-consuming, I won’t lie.  By the same token, though, it has been an escape in a way that I wouldn’t have predicted: because the sewing has been really monotonous and there has been so much of it, I was able to turn my brain off for extended periods, and not have to worry or suffer from anxiety or angst.  I could just SEW without having to stop and do too much math.  And because the project kept expanding, I didn’t have long stretches where I could start something new and hem and haw about what that would be–it’s surprisingly productive to have something you KNOW you should be working on, and not have to do a bunch of square dancing trying to figure out where to spend your time.  So as much work as these quilt tops have been, they’ve paid off in rewards I didn’t anticipate.  And isn’t that the hallmark of all worthy endeavors?

These quilt tops are twins in multiple senses: they’re twin-sized, for one thing, and for another they’re matching–or, at least, as matching as a planned-scrappy quilt can be.  I started making just a small quilt for our youngest, then realized that our girls would be sharing a room for the next four-plus years and decided to make TWO, and then wanted them to be larger quilts, which moved them up to twin-sized, but I wanted them to have a real drop and go all the way to the mattress lower edge at the sides of the bed, which means they’re actually 6 blocks by 7 blocks, or 72″ x 84″.  That’s 42 blocks per quilt, or 84 blocks total, each block at 12″ finished.  That’s a lot of 2.5″ squares to sew together–it’s 3024, as a matter of fact.  All cut and sewn one at a time.

The color palette is determined by the initial collection with which I began–Dream On, a Moda collection from about two-and-a-half years ago.  I call this “planned scrappy” in the sense that some fabrics are repeated and other aren’t, and that it doesn’t much matter WHAT fabrics are in the quilt so long as they adhere to the pretty strict color guidelines.  I love the pink and yellow of the Dream On vintage-bedsheet-look fabrics, and must have been sub-consciously thinking of these fabrics when we painted the girls’ walls pale, butter yellow and their ceiling ballet pink.  So there is a lot of yellow and pink here, in solids and in blenders.  There is also a goodly amount of orange, which warms up the quilts, but nothing else–all the greens and blues are from the Dream On fabrics, and the mixers are limited to those three shades of pink, orange, and yellow.

I ran out of my original blenders wayyyy sooner than I thought–I foolishly thought I had enough fabric at the beginning and realized when I came back to this project a few months ago that those were NEVER going to be enough.  I found some more that I really love from Pink Castle Fabrics, and added them to the bunch, working to mix the rows up and balance the newer prints with the original blenders.

There are plenty of seams here that aren’t perfect.  No matter how much I chain stitched or how much I assembly-lined, they didn’t all match up.  And I really, sincerely have no problem with that.  Somehow–and this seems weird to me–even if my individual seams didn’t match when putting one row to another, the length of the overall row would meet up just fine.  So I guess I was more consistent than I thought?  In the end, every block came within 1/8″ of being exactly 12.5″ square, which is a little miracle in itself.  I guess there’s something to be said for really diving in and doing whole chunks all at one time!

The colors are so springy and lovely, especially this time of year as we’re waiting for the warmth to come back.  I can already imagine (partly because I already took a sample photo on Instagram) how sweet and little-girly they’ll be in their shared room once they’re done.

Naturally, because it’s me and I seem to have some sort of genetic block against doing things the easy way, I am only about halfway to being done with these.  I have some really serious plans for the backs that I’m particularly attached to and working on as we speak.  I can say “applique” and “falling blocks,” but won’t share anything else until I have something to show you.  But let’s throw in that the quilt top won’t be the only star of this show, shall we?

In the next few weeks, as the sun makes its return, I’ll be working on the back in hopes that not too long past Easter I can get these quilts complete and put them in the girls room.  That will be the alarm moment, too, to make the Big Transition: our youngest will be potty training, our four-year-old boy will be moving out of the toddler bed and into a Big Boy bed so that the littlest can have the toddler bed, and we’ll be swapping a ton of furniture all at the same time between the rooms–including selling the crib, since we won’t have another baby to put in it.  Big stuff happening at our house this spring!

For their part, the two little girls–ages six and almost-three–are VERY excited to have matching bed quilts.  They currently love sharing a room, and my husband and I talked the other night about when we would shift them to NOT share a room.  We both think that because there is a four-year age difference, somewhere around when our six-year-old turns nine or ten, she’ll want a room of her own–but we’re not going to be the ones to suggest it.  I love that they love sharing a room, the way I loved sharing a room with my sister, and I don’t have any belief or expectation that children need to have rooms of their own.  And if they want to keep sharing until high school, well, I’m down with that.  Plus, these quilts were a LOT of work, y’all–here’s hoping we get more than a few years’ use out of them!

It’s here!!  The Sewing Clothing for Kids e-course starts today and I am seriously excited.  The class includes EIGHT patterns for boys AND girls (including the always popular Overmost!), with lots of options and variations to play with.  Plenty of video lessons, lots of basic techniques, and a ton of cute fabric to look at as we go–all of which means that as long as you have basic sewing skills and a desire to sew clothing for kids, you’re totally ready to take the course!

Look at all the cute projects!!  I love teaching this class online, and walking through these patterns with folks as they sew for the little ones in your lives.  Plus, it gives me an excellent excuse to start working on a spring wardrobe for my own little ones–since these patterns range in size from 12m to 6, I get to sew for my kids while you sew for yours!

See all the registration information and details, and then click through to join the group.  There are still spots left, and I’d love to spend these last few weeks before spring has truly sprung, making some projects to treasure and love.

Full disclaimer: this was not a DIY project.  But we did gut this bathroom down to the studs and make it our own.  Which, in its own way, is pretty exciting.

This is the Jack-and-Jill bath that the children share.  The two younger girls are in one room, our boy in the other, with the bath in between.  It is the world’s smallest ever Jack-and-Jill, measuring just 6 feet by 8 feet.  SMALL.  And when we first bought this house, it felt a whole lot smaller.

You know how when you fantasize about doing a home renovation, you have that one project that sticks out and you say, “Until XYZ is done, I will not be able to draw breath or function in this house”?  No?  Just me and my mom, then.  After we closed on the house–possibly even the very next day–my mother drove over to stay for a week and help me do some projects to make the house ready for us to move in.  Primarily, that involved painting every surface in sight, but there was one other task necessary before we could be at peace in this house: removing the sliding doors from the shower in the Jack-and-Jill bathroom.  That’s right, people: a bath measuring just 8 feet by 6 feet had SLIDING GLASS SHOWER DOORS in addition to a FULL-SIZE vanity and a door from one bedroom that was designed to swing IN.  Which meant that if you entered through the door in the picture above, you would stand by the vanity, close that door, rotate in place to move past the toilet, be less than an arm’s length from the shower doors, and have to maneuver past a WHOLE OTHER DOOR to pass through the bathroom.  It felt like a coffin.  A pretty, pretty white-and-blue bow-covered coffin.

It was so bad that these are literally the only photos I have of the bathroom before the sliding shower doors were removed:

You know why they’re so blurry?  Because the DOORS MADE ME CRY.  They had to go, and they had to go first.

No, wait, OK, I have one other with the doors in it:

See how the door from our boy’s room opens INTO the bath?  And the vanity is, like, RIGHT THERE when it does?  And what you can’t see in this is that the toilet is juuuust out of frame in that lower right corner.  You had less than 3 square feet of space to function in this bathroom, and it felt like the walls were closing in.  Fortunately, removing shower doors is pretty quick and easy.

So Mom and I got on that already, back in Dec 2011 before we even moved in:

Pop!  Doors like these are literally glued to the tile in nearly every home.  There are some screws, usually along the sides, and possibly into the tub wall, but only a few.  We got them out with a standard screwdriver–not even a drill–and then used the same screwdriver to pry the doors away from the glue and pop them off the wall.  Now, they’re glass, so they weigh a ton, but the metal frame doesn’t, and each door can be slid out of the frame and carried away.

The glue took a little more work to get off, but some elbow grease and it was done!  No biggie.  Look how messy, though:

The tub is the original from when the house was built in 1968, and is a cast iron enameled model, so I wanted to keep it.  We used a scratch-resistant scrubby product to get all the glue off, and the whole thing cleaned right up.

From there, I did a little bit of priming over the wallpaper, but honestly we painted every single room in this entire house, and this one wasn’t a big priority, so I bailed part way through and this bathroom looked pretty half-done for…well, about a year.  Seriously.

The kids used it, but over time, we began to suspect there was some moisture trapped in the walls.  We had seen some old water damage when we pulled out the carpet in the bedroom that shares a wall with the shower, where the floorboards of the hardwoods had gotten a bit black.  And my husband has a mold sensitivity that seemed to get worse gradually after we moved in.  We knew there had been water at some point behind the wall, and worried that we’d need to tear out all the drywall to figure out what the issue was.

We also hated that door.  This one:

Good grief, WHY is it opening INTO the bathroom?  We decided to make it a pocket door so that we could recover the swing space, and since the pocket door would slide into the wall where we suspected some moisture issues, and since we wanted to replace the tile anyway, suddenly we found ourselves in the midst of an entire to-the-studs gut of this bathroom.

I loved the tub, so that stayed, and the toilet is pretty standard-issue, so keeping those fixtures saved some cash.  We also love the floors, which are the original tile from when the house was built.  But all the wall tile, the sink and vanity, and the fixtures got changed and renewed.  Plus, we ripped out that wallpaper–eeek!  twelve-year-old-girl-circa-1984!–and painted, instead.

Now, we have this to enjoy:

We chose a paint color as close to the accent tile in the floor as we could get, and had them paint the walls and the ceiling the same shade to make the room seem as tall as possible.  All the trim was painted bright white, rather than the buttermilk color it was previously–that alone made a giant difference.  The vanity came out and was replaced with a pedestal sink to gain some floor space.  All the tile came out and was replaced with a jumbo-sized white glossy tile to enlarge the bath visually–it’s a little bit of a trick, but it does make the whole place seem larger to have larger tile on the walls.

Rather than the shower doors, I sewed up a shower curtain in a white-and-blue print, to keep the visual clutter to an absolute minimum in here.  There just isn’t enough space to break it up by adding another color, and keeping the palette light and tight has helped make everyone feel a lot less claustrophobic.

Most of the fixtures are off the rack at Lowe’s or Home Depot, including this light fixture.  We still haven’t found the right mirror, but I expect we’ll go for something rectangular and framed in black, for a little wall pop under the light.

My husband picked out all the fixtures his very own self while I was out of town.  I love the clean, modern lines that are still classic–I like to avoid “trying too hard” syndrome, which can be so easy to fall into.

We always hang our shower curtain waaaaaaay up close next to the ceiling–you can see here that it’s a scant 5″ or so below the paint.  I love how much taller that makes the whole room look, and that I get to see a ton more of the fabric than I would otherwise.  This print is based on children’s writing tablets, and is both subtle and nostalgic–easy pick (that only took three months of deciding).

As for towel racks, in the old bathroom you would walk into one on the side of the vanity on the way through the door, and that sucked.  I thought we’d put a double on the back of the swing door, but it turns out it’s too wide.  Right now, looks like we’ll hang it inside the shower itself, but I’m waiting for my contractor to come back with his tile drill so we don’t destroy what we just put in.

We already had him add one towel bar over the toilet and this glass shelf over the sink–again, I’m working to avoid as much visual clutter as humanly possible, and now I really like that the kids’ bath toys and toothbrushes have all the color in the room.

The room still isn’t complete–we’ll need a cabinet over the toilet for the various little things that get stored–and that grow as children grow.  But the difference between before and now is pretty much night and day:

Next project: curtains and drapes for every room in the house!  Lots of sewing left to do.  Woot!

I sent out a newsletter announcement on Friday, and clicking “Send” was harder than I thought.  In fact, I walked away and came back after picking the kids up from school, because I needed it to sit for a minute before I sent it out.  I was letting thousands–literally–of people know that I am closing the Whipstitch bricks-and-mortar shop in Atlanta as of the end of this month.

Just to reassure everyone: the blog is continuing.  The online classes will continue.  I will teach in person.  I might even write another book.  But the physical shop is closing and won’t re-open.

This was, I’m sure you know, a super difficult decision to make.  And there is no way I can tell you that it was entirely due to one factor or another–there were a lot of issues at play and they all formed a part in me choosing to close the shop.  There were also a lot of factors that made me hesitate and delay closing, and I struggled with those two opposing forces for weeks and weeks and weeks.  In the end, it took an epiphany for me to finally know for certain that it was time to let the shop go.

I love the store.  I love what it represents and I love what it makes possible.  I have been un-endingly grateful for the freedom to invite some of my dear friends from all over the country to come and visit and teach and promote their own businesses.  I have loved the 1000+ individuals who have walked through the store and taken classes with us, and who send me emails and leave me comments telling me how sewing has impacted their life and that Whipstitch was a part of that.  I feel humbled and honored to know that something that I feel passionately about has affected others so deeply that they feel moved to take time from their day to thank me.  It is almost overwhelming to know that something I would do for fun can have that kind of impact on others, and I have felt so strongly and so deeply that teaching sewing and sharing it with others is my vocation in the truest sense of the word: a calling, an irresistible impulse to reach outside myself and draw others in.  I still believe that, and still find such joy in writing about sewing, in teaching sewing, in creating things with needle and thread, in watching others learn this thing that has meant so much to me for longer than I was really aware.

Here’s the thing: I am the only mother my children will ever have.  I am the only wife my husband has.  And while I have owned the store, I have felt a pulling between the two.  I don’t sense that pull with the other parts of Whipstitch.  Not from writing books.  Not from writing the blog.  Not from designing patterns.  I feel it from owning a store, which called me to be away physically to tend to it, or mentally and emotionally to keep the wheels turning.  In the end, it meant I was giving everyone a little and no one a lot, and while I get plenty of emails asking me how I “do it all,” in fact, I wasn’t doing it all.  I was doing it partly, and when it came to my family, I was doing less than I wanted.  Too many times asking my children to wait, not enough of saying, “Yes, we can do that RIGHT NOW.”

Our lives have seasons.  When it comes to the season of my life in which I have owned a bricks-and-mortar shop, I have no regrets–I have made more meaningful friendships and met more people who I value deeply during this season of my life than nearly any other since my childhood.  These three years have made such an enormous impact on me that I sit here with tears on my cheeks thinking of all that I have learned and felt and hoped and experienced as a direct result of owning this store.  I wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on a single second of that, and I am grateful every day that I have been given the honor of being part of something so much bigger than I am.  The big insight for me is that I recognize that I don’t want to miss out on my children, either, and I for sure don’t want to miss out on my marriage.  This is not the season of my life for me to do both, and as deeply as I love the shop, I love my family more.

The shop has been a huge part of my every day for three years, and I will miss it.  I’m excited about what closing the bricks-and-mortar will mean for Whipstitch moving forward, though–so many plans and ideas and sketches and lists that have been on the back burner, waiting until I had the time to bring them to life.  My online classes, which continue to grow and develop; my patterns, which I have neglected but am already working to expand; another book, if they’ll let me write one, since I would dearly love to; and even some secret dreams and ideas that I’ve toyed with but knew I could never tackle with a shop open.  It’s a new season, and while it’s scary to watch the old season pass, I’m excited to see what the new one will bring.

I hope you’ll join me in saying farewell to the West Atlanta location before we lock the doors one last time.  I’m throwing a party on Friday, March 22 at 7 pm and I’d love to see you.  If you live anywhere near the Atlanta area, please drive over and visit and wave to the tiny disco ball and give me the chance to hug you and thank you one last time for all that this shop has meant to me over the past three years.  I want the chance to see as many faces as possible so that I can express to you in person exactly how huge this experience has been to me, how grateful I feel that I was given such a treasured opportunity, and how much I look forward to new chances for us to see one another and to be surprised and excited about what comes next.

What: Whipstitch of West Atlanta closing party

When: Friday, March 22 at 7 pm

Who:  Anyone and everyone is invited!  No RSVP necessary.