Its a Sewcialist Revolution!

I don't know if you've noticed, but the sewing corner of the interwebs has been growing. You can find us on blogs, facebook, twitter, and instagram. One day I was poking about and thinking "Gosh, we need a name. We should give ourselves a name!"

The great thing about out loud thoughts on the internet is people have a tendency to answer them. Fairly soon after that Leila of "Three Dresses Project" came up with the name "Sewcialists!". Boy, did that stick. I mean, think about it. Not only are we a community of people that love to sew and talk about it, we're from all over the world and a little subversive in our desire to make clothing when its just as easy to go BUY clothes (Wait, you can buy clothes? Huh). We're like the 21rst Century Sewing Circle. WORLD WIDE BABY!


This is where ya'll come in! The Sewcialists are seeking emblem designs for our budding community of sewing aficionados. We need your talent. Or your friend's talent. Its cool, we don't discriminate. We're laid back like that.

Who are the Sewcialists?

Sewcialists are those who sew and chat about sewing, fabric stashes, etc on social media. Any type of communication that utilizes the internet, really.

What are we looking for?  We are looking for a design that:

• Relates to sewing and the social nature of sewcialists
• Is modern, simple, recognizable and memorable
• Is useable in black & white as well as in color
• Lets not forget fame and glory! The winner will be given credit where credit is due. 

What will the winner win?

• A 1 year subscription to Make magazine
• A $100 cash prize. The cash prize of one hundred US currency will be paid through PayPal only
• A custom ipad sleeve
• The everlasting adoration of a bunch of people that like to make things. This could be used to your advantage, I'm sure.

We are proud to have MAKE as our official competition sponsor! They're the ones giving the winner the subscription.

(Come on, how cool is that? We have official sponsorship from other subversive types!)

Deadline for submissions is April 20th. Submit to jury [at] sewcislists [dot] org

We have a sewcialists jury of 10 who will be blogging about this contest. Check out the jury list at sewcialists.org.

General Voting

April 24 until May 8: The jury members will open up general voting on the designs that made it to the final round.

• Voting will happen via comments on the jury blog posts
• Every sewcialist has one vote per jury-blog
• One person can vote multiple times (as long as it's on different jury-blogs) on different designs, or on the same design.

Any questions? Please let me know! Feel free to share this contest with your friends.In fact, PLEASE DO! Spread the word far and wide. It's open to all. The fine print can be found at sewcialists.org. I highly recommend that those looking to enter READ the fine print, there are stipulations about the file type.

Hashtag Sewing

Source: Uploaded by user via Lady on Pinterest

Its a strange thing that's happened recently. See, once upon a time I said I had no interest in Twitter. Even the lovely Neil Gaiman fans couldn't entice me to be active on it and then along came my sew-sistas (I just made that up). While blogging is wonderful for the sharing of more complex ideas sometimes I just want to shout "LOOK AT THIS AWESOME DEAL I GOT ON FABRIC!".  The majority of the people in my life pat me on the head and say "That's nice dear".

You know what I'm talking about, right? We're a special breed of enthusiasts that most people just don't "get", even some of the others in the maker community, I'm betting. I love that technology allows like-minded people to find their own across the globe, it really is an amazing thing.

So thanks to twitter I now have coat sewing buddies and a #sewingdare to finally make my Lady Grey coat that I wanted to make almost two years ago. It probably won't be finished until next winter, but I'm OK with that. I will have a lovely new coat to help make the darker days of winter seem better. The idea this year is to get faster at sewing the things I know how to make and overcoming the fear of mistakes on new skills. I have a lot of holes in my wardrobe to fill, too. Work basics, mostly. And jeans.

In other news I decided that I do not have the time to teach class this year. I'm finally on a day schedule and realizing just how much I miss my family. I'm also taking care of some health issues I've been trying to ignore for a while. What I'm trying to say is that, instead of resolutions, this year is going to be about getting myself back in balance.

And on that note, I leave you with one of the more beautiful videos I've seen in a while: