While Stuart Hillard didn’t manage to make it to the final round of the Great British Sewing Bee, his bubbly personality showed through and he was described by the judges as the person who “brought the joy into sewing.”
Missing the camaraderie of school, a group of recent graduates from the Alberta College of Art + Design started Contextural: A Fibre Arts Cooperative.
This month, Jenn McMillan is celebrating the 1-year anniversary of her company Sew Fine Thread Gloss, proving that a little help from your friends can go a long way in growing a business. The company offers beeswax-based thread conditioners that help avoid thread snags, frays, and tangles when doing any kind of handwork. Jenn’s goal is simple: help make hand-sewing a more enjoyable process.
Pompoms and tassels are happy things—joyous, whimsical additions to any outfit or décor. Throw in neon-bright colors and it’s a party with yarn. But pompoms as a business?
Folkwear is one of the oldest independent sewing pattern companies. They publish global, historical, and vintage sewing patterns, often including extensive cultural history, textile information, and handwork embellishment instructions in their patterns.
Craft Industry Alliance is excited to announce that Sulky has joined us as a corporate member. Sulky has a longstanding history in the sewing community and is best known for their rayon threads and stabilizers. The rayon threads and stabilizers are used most often for machine embroidery and quilting, but these make up only a portion of their products.
Malabrigo is one of the few companies that has successfully executed hand-dyeing on a massive scale — something typically done by small, independent and one-person operations.
When Liz Stiglets, owner of cozyblue, first launched her Etsy shop in 2007, she made every product by hand, whether it was knitting a hat, sewing a soft animal, or hand-stitching a wool felt crown. But she soon realized this type of work wasn’t sustainable creatively or financially.
Jill Wiseman Designs has grown from one person working at home, to four additional employees in a 3,350 square-foot warehouse full of beads and tools in Austin, Texas.
“Nick and Amy — I came in as a fan, and I came out as a super fan. They couldn’t have been sweeter, and they set such a nice tone from the get-go. That level of kindness and collegiality really came from them. Since they didn’t have to judge us, they acted as advocates for us.”
For Michelle Bazeley and other makers with physical disabilities, applying to a craft show or attending an event takes a great deal more energy than just checking for conflicts with a personal calendar of events, though.
Reuse, repurpose, and recycle is more than a slogan at SCRAP USA — it’s a business model that aims to make creative reuse stores a sustainable endeavor applicable to any community.
Jody Rice is the face behind Satsuma Street, a cross stitch design company that offers both digital PDFs and printed cross stitch patterns, as well as complete cross stitch kits. Rice’s tag line is “changing people’s minds about cross stitch since 2013,” and if you take a look at her modern colorful designs, you’ll see why!
It’s easy to spend an entire afternoon at Purl Soho. Cubbyhole shelves line the walls of the shop, stuffed to capacity with thousands of skeins of yarn, in every weight and color you can imagine. Martha Stewart Living touted Purl Soho, “the downtown Manhattan yarn store [that] helped make knitting a hobby as likely to be practiced by models killing time on shoots as by grandmas producing booties.” Founded in 2002 by Joelle Hoverson, Purl Soho debuted at the forefront of the contemporary craft movement, during an era where knitting think-pieces proclaimed that cozy was making a comeback, and knitting wasn’t just for grannies anymore.
JMF Woodcrafts’ motto is “thinning the line between limitation and imagination” and focuses on building plaques, furniture, pens, engraved bourbon barrel lids, coin racks, and miscellaneous memorabilia. All of the products are made from Baltic birch, reclaimed timber, and Kentucky bourbon barrels.
Businesswoman and author Felicia Lo Wong took an unusual path to launching a hand-dyed yarn business in Vancouver, Canada. Here’s the story of her journey.
Amy Oxford has been a professional rug maker for 30+ years, selling her rugs, operating a business for supplies, creating kits and patterns, and teaching.
Vance Zahorski’s clever invention is a wearable ring with recessed blades for quickly and safely cutting thread or fishing line. In November of 2016 Zahorski was on the TV show Shark Tank where contestants pitch their product to real investors. Zahorski’s pitch was successful, and he secured an investment of $130,000 in exchange for a 30% stake in the company and that’s when Thread Cutterz really took off.
The Canadian couple behind Low Poly Crafts is taking low poly art higher, creating 3D do-it-yourself kits that are fun, artistic, and relaxing to make.
Owning a handmade business can be a wild ride. Just ask Angela Smith, owner of the Houston, Texas-based tool and supply business Purl & Loop.