Ariane K and her husband, Bruno, just launched Textillia and already have over 500 members. Textillia is an online community and database for sewing, quilting, and textile art enthusiasts and businesses, similar to the much beloved knitting website Ravelry. She says, “We’re in Beta right now, it’s a VERY early launch so we have a ton planned and are in active development, but we wanted to let people start using the site now that the basics are in place – we know how much the sewing community has been wishing for something like this!”

elizabeth of UpCraftClub received a $25,000 grant to give product (for FREE) to shops so they can facilitate the digital pattern sales for their customers and make money from every online sale.  She says, “We have a waiting list of shops at the moment and now that the grant has been approved we can start shipping to them ASAP. If you have a shop or know a shop owner here is where to sign up to learn more here.”

Kim Werker says, “I’ve been posting a blog series with in-depth info on how to write an outstanding crochet pattern (much of which is, of course, applicable to any kind of craft-pattern writing). This is something I’ve wanted to do for years, in part because crochet is a craft with a huge amount of variability and writing technical instructions for it is a meaty challenge. I also get loads of questions from my Craftsy students about patterns they’re following, and the vast majority of those questions can’t be answered, because they come up as a result of the pattern-writer’s failure to include key information, or to be usefully explicit. (I’m also using the series as a bit of a personal case study in content marketing.)”

Christa Watson says, “I get a lot of requests to teach EQ7 (Electric Quilt 7 software) and am happy to say I’ll be teaching a 3 day intensive class on getting started with EQ7 at EQ Academy in Perrysburg, OH April 21-23. EQ is the best tool I’ve found for creating original quilt designs – come learn with me, or pass this information on to your customers. Visit christaquilts.com/teaching for my complete teaching schedule.”

Member News is a weekly post to celebrate the accomplishments of Craft Industry Alliance members. Have something new and noteworthy to share with both members and our wider community (including non-member followers?) Tell us about it here.