Saying Farewell: Looking back at all the fun

One of the nicest things about Sewcialists (in its most recent incarnation) was the myriad ways that the team came up with over the last three years to share in community and sewing. Here’s a bit of a whirlwind retrospective to remind ourselves of all the fun!*

*Disclaimer: we just couldn’t cover everything, so this is a dip in and out kind of a deal. We hope that’s OK!

Theme Months

• 

• 

• 

Theme months were the most effort but often the most fun! We often chose theme months together – via community poll – and we covered so many topics.

My personal favourites were the ones which people could take in any direction they liked — things like Sew Stripes, TNT month and Denim. I also loved how enthusiastically our sewing community took part and that we almost always had more volunteer authors than we asked for!

We have pretty much no way to tell what your favourite theme month was, but I can tell you that Menswear For Everyone, Sewcialists TNT and Sew Brave Sewcialists look to have the most posts on Instagram, along with Sewcialists Love MMMay, which was a very easy join-in! I suspect these are hashtags which outlived their theme month, so this isn’t really definitive…

As scheduler, every theme month was a rollercoaster ride, shifting from “We are going to have heaps of posts,” then “We don’t have enough posts,” and back to “Oh wait, we have plenty“. Someone always dropped out because life got in the way, and others always stepped in to fill the gap. Lovely.

Mini Challenges

• 

• 

• 

Mini-Challenges: Like theme months, only faster and more fun! I LOVE THEM ALL!

For the first, and arguably the best: Sewing Power Words. We offered you a fabulous quiz to find your power word — were you Bright, Cozy, Fierce, Free, Funky, Spicy or Strong? Were you more than one of those because you didn’t like your first answer? We didn’t care, as long as we were sewing.

Next up, we asked you spin a wheel to get assigned a colour from the Sewicialists logo and to sew with that colour.

Subsequent challenges included Texture, Sew Your Birth Year and SewcialistsTNTee (my personal favourite because I can’t go past a pun!).

In every Mini Challenge you wowed us with your creativity and enthusiasm for what was an intensive few days.

Series Posts

• 

• 

• 

• 

While Theme Months and Mini Challenges were an intense focus on one topic or approach, the series’ we ran were a slower burn. These were usually something an editor hit upon as an idea they would like to read more about or knew would add something to our community.

Our standout series has been the work of the wonderful Gabby on her Dear Gabby / Gabby’s Fitting Series. 33 posts of amazing in depth technical knowledge and advice that is an unbelievable gift to the sewing community. If you haven’t browsed those posts yet, now is the time — her knowledge is fabulous and I learn something every time!

We also ran a year long series to encourage people to Sew The Precious. In fact, I am not really sure that series ever ended or will ever end! Before we started it, there were only a few posts with the hashtag on Instagram, now there’s over 1,500 posts. Not all of those relate to our series, of course, but the quest to sew that beautiful fabric continues forever!

A related series for us was Textiles of the World, which gave us a lovely insight into fabrics from all over the globe. We wanted to deepen our understanding of the different fabrics which are traditional or common around the world, and to spend some time just enjoying the magic of fabric.

The final series we wanted to call out here in this farewell post was Ask The Sewcialists. This one embodies what Sewcialists was all about — most of these were asking you to tell us what you think! There’s everything from sewing techniques and approaches to moral dilemmas in there, and we loved hearing from you.

Stand-Alone Posts

The last category-but-not-a-category we wanted to cover was the myriad of stand alone posts we have published over the years, often from guest authors. Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to link to these because they aren’t a category – you just need to scroll through the site and find them yourself! We will take this opportunity to say THANK YOU from the bottom of our hearts to everyone that has contributed to this latest incarnation of Sewcialists. You were superstars.

Podcast

Finally, we also had a podcast! It started with a guest slot on Sew Organised Style daily which increasingly linked into content from the blog and the editors. Maria has been amazing at picking up the amazing stories and guests who have so much more to tell. Maria continues to run the Sew Organised Style podcast after Sewcialists finishes, and we encourage you to go listen!

Wait, didn’t you miss something?

Finally, you might have noticed I have left out the Sewcialists Interviews and the Who We Are Series. These are so dear to our hearts and so anchored in the mission we have pursued here at Sewcialists that they will get their own posts over the next week or so!

Tell us — what was your favourite thing we did at Sewcialists? Did you have a favourite theme month, series or mini challenge? Hit us up in the comments and let us know! 🙂

---

Chloe is a Sewcialists Editor who lives and sews in Australia, on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. She blogs at chlo-thing.com and can be found on Instagram here.