#SewcialistsTNT Stats (NERD ALERT!)

Hi All,

Chloe here again to do one final wrap on the TNT month.  This one is a little different — no pictures of clothes… Just glorious numbers (well actually, graphs).

I am (self-proclaimed) resident nerd/geek at the Sewcialists, so obviously I decided to track the stats of everything posted during TNT month.

*facepalm*

I didn’t really anticipate just HOW MANY posts there might be, or just HOW MANY things I might want to track (designers, clothing types, numbers of makes etc.).  Having said that, I am so glad I did this.  I am completely fascinated by the results, which can be summarised as:

• We like indie designers
• We like dresses, then T-shirts best
• Some patterns are stand out in their category as very very popular
• If we sew for other people, we haven’t found TNTs for them or don’t care about posting them for this (most people seemed to be wearing their own makes)

I can hear you sobbing already — stop talking woman and show me the pretty graphs!  OK.

Here is the helicopter view of what we made:

Not really a surprise that dresses win the day — they seem overwhelmingly popular on blogs, IG and so on.  The above graph tracks what we posted about, where a single post detailing five makes of the same dress, counts as one.

The next graph (below) details how many of each type of garment we made.  This one has some serious caveats on it, because where people didn’t state how many, I assumed two (because you have to make at least two for it to be a TNT right?).  This data is therefore seriously dodgy (that’s a technical term), because a lot of people didn’t specify how many they had made so only two were counted.

To be fair, this pattern of results isn’t dissimilar from the post-only counts.  Tees are winning out over dresses, but they weren’t until I added the count from one single post (32 versions of the same tee pattern!!!).  Interesting to see how one outlier skewed that result right at the end of the month — dresses held the lead in both counts until then.

The whole “how many made” versus “how many posts” remains a point of contention for me, because it really affects some of the who we made stats too:

Look at all that Grainline!  This is where the “what” and the “who” are quite connected.  Some pattern makers have a spread of patterns (True Bias, for example) whereas Grainline’s dominance in this graph is because of the Linden.  To illustrate this, check out the “whose sweaters / sweatshirts did we make” graph:

Grainline Linden Sweaters.  That’s what we made!  I do wonder if we had run the TNT month in US/UK summer whether these results might have been significantly different.

Finally, a quick whip around of the other popular categories.  I used the contentious count for these graphs too, btw, because I am a rebel (but also because the tendency for a pattern to become something people make a million of speaks volumes to me in the TNT discussion).

We like a nice amount of different dresses, with some pretty predictable favourites…

There was similar diversity in the tee arena, with similarly predictable stand outs.  I would say that the Deer and Doe Plantain was generally trending well until Emily Handler, who can be found at @ekhandler, posted about making 32 of them!  This was the record for most makes from a single pattern. 🙂

Finally we have trousers, which weren’t as diverse as I thought they might be.

So what does all this mean?  Nothing really, it’s just a bit of fun.  I am suspicious there might be a sort of science to the TNT — perhaps they are more likely to be strong basics, or from particular companies who draft to a certain shape, or who have a certain following. It’s cool to look at what we shared over the month anyway.

Finally, an update on my quest to find my own TNT (see Catching the Unicorn).  I think I did it!  I have made two versions of the Paprika Patterns Ruby Joggers as part of pattern testing (one long, one short) and I LOVE both.  Even more importantly, I have plans for the third pair!  It’s a TNT for ME!

I am going to use this exercise to pursue further TNTs in the coming months, by making our most popular.  The Grainline Linden, the Deer and Doe Plantain / Hey June Lane Raglan and the True Bias Hudson Pants are all on my list!

Thanks for sharing all your makes so I can steal your TNTs. 🙂

Chloe

[Disclaimer:  I am not a statistician and I did this largely manually.  The results are mostly right, but I may well have missed a count above two buried in the comments, or a even the odd IG post, though I think I got them all.  It’s for fun only…!]