It’s been a busy ten months since the Sewcialists relaunched!
- June: Relaunched after an 18 month hiatus
- August: Hosted Tribute Month, and hit our first 1000 Instagram subscribers
- September: Started the Who We Are series, and invited you to vote on upcoming themes
- November: Hosted TNT Month, and hit 3000 IG subscribers
- February: Hosted #SewStripes month, and hit 7000 IG subscribers
Basically, we’re growing fast and it’s all thanks to you! We (the volunteer team behind the Sewcialists) are incredibly grateful that you’ve enjoyed our theme months and discussions, and we’re proud that the comments section is active and engaged!
On the other hand, maintaining this community takes a lot of work. We’ve published 120 blog posts in the last ten months, which means planning, coordinating with authors, editing, scheduling, publicising, and monitoring comments on every single post — plus 350 Instagram posts as well!
As our community grows, we are going to make some changes to streamline the behind-the-scenes process:
- Now that it is possible to follow hashtags on Instagram, we won’t try to re-gram every single photo that is tagged. We don’t want to overwhelm your feed or ourselves! We’ll still share some highlights through the @sewcialists Instagram account.
- As the participation in each challenge increases, we are ending the Round-Up blog posts. Instead, we are going to keep the community involvement going by hosting monthly discussion posts, where we hope you’ll chat with each other in the comments about various topics! We’ll share more when it is time for our first chat.
- We’ve be getting more spam lately, so we’ve shifted our comment settings. Now your first-ever comment will be held for moderation, but all subsequent comments will be posted automatically without waiting for approval.
- The Facebook directions team continues to be open to anyone who wants to join! We do ask (as always) that applicants answer a few questions to demonstrate that they know the purpose of the group before they join — sometimes we have people ask to join who think it’s just a typical sewing group, and that gets a bit confusing. If you try to join and aren’t prompted to answer the questions, try contacting us via sewcialists@gmail.com or Instagram.
We hope to keep the Sewcialists community going for many years, and making our process more sustainable will be a huge help!
Now for the fun part — we will be announce May’s theme month next week! Any guesses what it might be?
Gillian, These updates are wise and I hope will free up some of your time too. You’re doing a great job leading this all. You’re a gem.
Thank you! It’s been stressful at times, but more and more it’s coming together more easily. I’m so pleased that the community has been so positive and supportive – sewists are the best!
Great job! Hard work pays off! Well done! May’s theme??? Sewing for the Royal Wedding??? Seeing something special just for yourself??? Spring Fashion??? Am I even warm??? 🙂
You aren’t even close! 😛 We’ll announce the new theme soon though! I think it’s going to be a really good one!
Thank you, Gillian and team. Sewcialists has been such a gift to the community. Sincerely, thank you. 🙂
Thank you for being a part of it!
How exciting! You’ve come so far! I can’t even begin to guess what May’s theme will be! LOL! :o)
I don’t know what I really expected when we relaunched… but it’s been bigger and better than I ever would have thought! i wondered if the Who We Are discussions would be contentious – but I feel that everyone has listened with an open heart and supported each other!
I can’t believe that it has only been 10 months since the Sewcialists reboot. I can’t thank you guys enough. I have found every post inspiring, informative and thought provoking and that they really connected with me on so (sew ?) many levels. It has given me back my sew-jo and I can’t wait for the next theme. Hope that it is the “Music Made Me Do It” one. Xx
I loved the idea of that theme too! i didn’t get many votes though – We’ll have to propose it again another time! 😉