Updates and Blue cup Shop

Where do I start? It’s been a while since I’ve taken the time to sit down and give the blog some love. Social media makes it easy to connect on their platforms and I neglected my poor blog. I’m still on social media, but not as much. Instagram was really good for sewing content in my opinion, I’m not sure when it shifted, but It doesn’t seem as interesting to me for sewing related content so I’m back to reading blogs…

What have I been doing? Welp, I’ve been reading, knitting, playing with my Cricut, playing Monopoly go mobile app (this is fun, but it can be addictive so proceed with caution!), and Diamond dot art. Hey, I just discovered Diamond dot art, and it’s a whole thing, it’s like paint by numbers but with lots of bling.

I was a pretty prolific sewist a few years ago, but I just couldn’t keep up with it; the process wasn’t satisfying anymore. Managing all the new pattern releases, blogging, pictures, and social media, it was getting to be too much…If you throw in adulting, and life, something had to give, and unfortunately it was the blog, mostly because of the pictures; my photographer went away to college and I just couldn’t embrace the clicky thing, she made me look fabulous 🥰.

Sewing, blogging/journaling, and telling the story of my sewing and crafting life is what I enjoy doing, and want to do, so here I am! Now, the blog won’t be perfectly curated (and it will have some grammatical errors), because that’s where I am now, and I want the process and journey to still be enjoyable. My other life is extremely stressful, detailed oriented, strategic, and the optics are everything; here, not so much, and I’m good great with it…

There’s so much to share, I will start with the what’s been keeping me busy. I started a PDF printing business almost two years ago! I know, right! I don’t have a good reason why I haven’t blogged about it, growing a business, marketing, social media, etc.. issa lot LOL!

Anywho, I saw a need for a black owned, women owned PDF printing business. The name of the shop is Blue Cup Shop and it’s on Etsy. Blue Cup Shop is a boutique printing service for the home sewer, small Indi sewing pattern designer, and anyone who has an aversion to taping paper together 🫣.

I service this wonderful community of garment sewers, cos players, and quilters who need small (or large) jobs printed and who may need a little more interaction or help from the proprietor. I fold the patterns for my customers, I help them navigate everything from Adobe to, downloading files to their iPads, to figuring out what is the correct size range on patterns. I’ve also enjoyed working with quilters to create appliqués for some pretty fantastic quilts! The quilters might just convert me LOL!

PDF printing in general can be challenging because it takes a few steps to figure out what you have, and what you need. I took a lot of time making a complicated process, less complicated. I believe there’s room for PDF printing, home printers, projector sewers, etc..in the sewing space. I’m happy to be here, and I appreciate everyone who has and still supports me! I provide a great customer experience, and my services allow sewers like me to spend less time with prep work, and more time sewing.

If you need PDF sewing patterns printed (A0, Copy Shop, Large format), check out my Etsy shop, or send me an email @ [Bluecupshop7 {at} gmail (dot com)], and I will help you make magic!

What’s currently on my table? For the last month or so, I’ve been working on the Closet Core Sienna Maker jacket. My next blog post will have all the details on this project. I feel like I’m behind the curve on this one (but that’s totally fine!), the jacket was released I believe in 2019, so yeah… I want to make a light weight quilted jacket (told you, the quilters are trying to convert me LOL!) and I hope I can get some folks to sew one too, I love sewing with other people as long as it’s low stress LOL.

In summation, iI t looks like I’m making transitional pieces in preparation for Spring. Two questions I have for you: first, will you sew a quilted jacket/vest/coat with me? If so, let me know in the comments what pattern you are using and we will give ourselves as long as we need to finish. Second, is it too early to start sewing for spring, if so, when do you start Spring sewing? -Q