If your project list is anything like mine, it’s crowded with ideas and plans for new and unfinished projects. I often say I could go a couple of years without a new idea and still not run out of things to work on!

When faced with such a smorgasbord of choices, how do you choose what to tackle?

This is a list of the questions I ask myself whenever I start a new project, and usually my answers give me clarity about my choices:

Is it a clear YES? Am I passionate about it, or is it something that must be done to meet a promised obligation? If it isn’t a clear YES, it’s often a NO that we just haven’t come to terms with!

Can I finish the project by the deadline in a way that makes me proud of my work? This is a big point to consider if you’re trying to build a reputation for your work, and this is where tracking your time helps you make these decisions.

Can I finish the project by the deadline without being super-stressed out about it? There’s enough stress in our lives without adding more!

If I work on this project, what might I be missing out on? Is there another project that will make me feel more fulfilled? Is there something else I would rather do or learn?

Is it the best use of my time right now? Will working on this be sweeter if I get other obligations done first?

Am I working on it because I already have invested time and money into it? Sometimes, we throw more time and resources at something because we think that honors our initial investment; it’s called sunk cost bias. But if you stop to ask yourself “Would I buy this fabric again and use it for this pattern again” and the answer is NO, then abandoning the project might be the wisest use of your time and money.

Will making this project affect my important relationships? Will I be cheating myself of time with my favorite people? Time with good people is so very precious.

Can I hire out or delegate any portion of the project? The actual quilting has always been my least favorite part of the process, so I began hiring that out to two wonderful long-arm artists a couple of years ago. Yes, it took a shift in my budget, but I now have time to do more of my favorite parts (designing and sewing the tops) – and I no longer stress (or stall) when something needs to be quilted.

Can I change my process to make a step easier or more efficient? While I love to finish my bindings by hand, I’ve started finishing them by machine sometimes so that I have more time for other things. I also recently bought a new, faster machine!

Am I doing this because it’s popular? Good things are popular for a reason, and there is great camaraderie in being in a group or quilt-a-long, but do I really want the finished product more than I want to do something else?

Will it teach me something I want to know? I recently took a very cool curves class from Jen Carlton Bailly, and came away with a handful of blocks that begged to become something bigger. But what I wanted was the knowledge of how to sew curves, and I got that in class. So I put one block with the instructions in my reference binder, and donated the rest (and some supporting fabrics) to my guild’s charity sewing program. My cast-offs will be someone else’s treasure, and I don’t have this cluttering my to do list or taking time I would rather spend differently. I give you permission to do the same!

Remember, you probably got into your hobby or practice because it was fun. A few strategic decisions will help keep it that way!

The post Studio Habits: SHOULD you make that project? appeared first on Hunter's Design Studio.

As we hit the middle of January, and I read across my social media feeds of everyone’s epic plans to ramp up this and change that, I find myself retreating to my studio armchair with a cuppa to ponder what advice I would offer for giving your sewing practice an infusion of new year’s intentions.

Of course I have an ORANGE pillow!

No, I’m not going to give you an insurmountable list of how to be perfect – really, who needs ANY more of that! I find it beyond overwhelming to think I could change that many facets of my life in the single stroke of a late December midnight! But I do believe you can shift your life one thing at a time, thus I’m offering you ONE thing I think can improve your studio practice right now, and yes, it’s free, and doesn’t require you giving up chocolate

The Studio Project List 

Every time I work on a project, at the end of the day, I write down what I was working on and how much time I spent on the various stages of it. I break it into stages because I’m one of the weirdos who loves checking off small steps of larger projects.

I also use this to track the number of things I work on. Sometimes I get to the end of a year and feel like I didn’t accomplish enough, and this list usually sets me straight on that. We often forget the hours we put into making blocks here and there for various things, or don’t count the time we spend sewing things that are not quilts. For instance, I made 26 Chunky Wee Zippy Pouches, 2 Chunky Wee Bags, and a couple dozen blocks, pincushions, etc. in 2017, beyond the 47 quilts I finished!*

Lastly, by tracking these broad numbers as I work I’m better able to estimate the price of custom work, should someone ask me to make them a quilt. Estimating the cost of materials isn’t hard, but we usually have a tough time estimating the amount of labor we might put into something. Because I have this historical data, I can go back as see how many hours I put into any given quilt, which allows me to make a more accurate proposal. Even if you never plan to sell a quilt, knowing this number allows you to see if you actually have the time to make that last minute gift you though of!

Give it a try!

Feel free to use this document as a starting point for creating your own list using the categories that are important to YOUR practice.

And for a New Year’s blast from the past, I wrote this a couple of years ago – and I still wish all these things for you!

For more on tracking the value of what you make, go here.

* With MUCH help from Nancy and Kazumi, my trusty long-arm artists!

The post Studio Habits: Keep a List appeared first on Hunter's Design Studio.

This time, it’s in a Facebook group known as the Worldwide Quilting Group. The administrator, Sandy Stubbs, has been scraping tutorial and pattern content from other sites, stripping it of attribution or links to the original source, and posting it. MANY of our well known designers have had their content stolen, some even had pages of books copied.

The image below is a tutorial that was stolen from Jacquie Gering’s site:

STEALING IS WRONG. We all learned this as wee kiddos, and it’s still the law of the land. Yes, this IS stealing. I know a lot of people think it isn’t because, hey, it’s all free on the internet, right? But no. If you take something that ISN’T yours, it’s stealing, plain and simple. And there is no polite euphemism for thievery. If you stole a car you’d go to jail.

So I imagine that a rationalization could be that it’s not stealing if the content was free at its original source. But here’s the thing… we post free content to be traffic drivers to our sites. WE ARE IN BUSINESS. Being in business means we aim to make a living, to earn money from our talent and skill. It’s a well-known business idea to offer tutorial content for free to bring customers to our site and hopefully get a sale out of them – it’s the loss-leader concept of internet commerce, and it operates on the similar premise of the deeply discounted stuff at a big box store on any given weekend. I know that some people think that sullying the sweet face of crafting with bold business marketing is somehow unsavory, but for heaven’s sake! All who work in quilting are businesswomen and men. We are here to earn a living.

And while our living is in jeopardy every time someone copies a pattern, or steals content like this group above, the people who really lose out are our customers. When we find out our work is stolen we get closer to quitting in disgust, and it certainly makes us pull back on our generosity. When we quit, our customers lose the ability to find great patterns to make. We are the Geese that Lay the Golden Eggs, and when our eggs are stolen, we die an inch at a time. Eventually there will be no more eggs.

EVERY SINGLE ONE of our customers is responsible for protecting the rich content we make. 

Think hard about that.

The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs, illustrated by Milo Winter in a 1919 edition of Aesop’s Fables

Just about every quilt made relies as much on the pattern as it does on the fabric. And I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard “I spent all that money on fabric, I’m not spending another $10 on a pattern too.” And all I can say to that is, “Would you buy all the trimmings for thanksgiving dinner, and then steal the turkey?” No, you wouldn’t. And if you did, you’d be arrested.

So again, please:

• Support us by paying for the things we make that inspire you.
• Don’t steal by copying. (How not to be an accidental content thief)
• Don’t let your friends copy things you’ve paid for.
• Help us by linking back and attributing the source of anything you share so we get an opportunity to market to new eyes.
• Tell us when you see our stuff being stolen.
• Don’t blame us, the victims, when we come after you with legal measures.**

**The above group blamed and attacked the content creators when they were challenged, and have since blocked anyone who brings up that this content is stolen. They have also hidden the group now. This is so very disappointing, and I hope that other members in the group continue to report their crimes outside the group. A classy group would have stayed public, apologized, deleted stolen content, and attributed/linked up free tutorials. 

And to those of you who DO pay for everything… blessings upon you and may your threads be never tangled! Thanks for hanging in with another post about stealing patterns. And yes… I’ll stop writing about theft when it stops happening.

The post Why Stealing Patterns is Like Killing the Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs appeared first on Hunter's Design Studio.

I sadly deal with more than one company who doesn’t start processing my payments until they are on the cusp of due, which means by the time the check is cut, signed, stuck in an envelope, mailed (usually on a Friday) and finally in my mailbox, it’s about 10 days overdue.

Imagine using this rationale with your credit card company. Right.

I don’t understand why a company would choose to build a process that essentially abuses their suppliers.

Their business is built on people like me making the things they want to sell. I’m the little gal at the end of the chain. I suppose I could short my long-arm artist, or screw over my assistant or printer to make up for it. But I’m not going to do that. I need what these people offer to the success of my business. Besides, it’s not who I am. I can do better than that.

And so can they.

Imagine an industry built on respecting each other, and making agreements that help EVERYONE rise. If we can create a $4 Billion industry out of the passion of hobbyists, surely we can create supportive and kind business practices.

…

Dear (person at company)

Thank you for your efforts to track this payment down. I appreciate it.

My agreement with you is for Net 30. This means that this invoice should have been paid in time for me to receive it by January 29th, not cut on February 2 and then mailed (and still not received as of today’s mail delivery on Feb 9)

What can be done to prevent this delay from happening again? I’m sure you can relate to my needing to rely on income coming when it’s supposed to, not to mention the cost of the time I have to spend chasing down payment that could be put to far better use – like making more things for our customers.

I realize a lot of companies in the quilt world have gotten by on this type of slow paying, and obviously suppliers like me are at your mercy.

But I’d like not to be. I’d like our agreement to be respected as a partnership where we both do what we say we are going to do, and we do it in a way that supports each other’s business goals, and respects what we have to offer each other.

My responsibility is that I make something that you can make money from, and that I ship it when you ask for it. And may I point out that you make DOUBLE what I make on this transaction (your profit is about $7, mine is about $3.50). Without designers making patterns for your customers, your business will eventually peter out. Yes, we will lose your sales but we still have other avenues through which to sell.

Your responsibility is to pay me in such a way that it honors our agreement and partnership. I truly don’t understand why your would create a process that essentially abuses your partners. Why would you want to?

And my hope is that you can change it.

Sincerely,

Sam

The post WASWI: Asking for better than you get appeared first on Hunter's Design Studio.

Readers desire a certain amount of intimacy with the lives of their writers. We want to know what’s going on personally, thinking that if we understand a bit of what’s behind the green curtain, we can better relate to the parts we can see. Women like to discover the things we have in common with each other – it helps us build community. And like most writers, I share things with you to help build connections in our relationship. I’m cool with telling you a little about my life, home, and family, and I appreciate the stories you write back to me, too. But with any sharing comes a fear of being shunned for what you say and how you appear, and in business, one has to always consider what the costs of speaking publicly might be.

As a formally educated artist, I’m comfortable with the concept of blending the personal and the political. Arts aside, we make political decisions all the time, most of them consciously motivated. I have friends whose diets are influenced by their thoughts on how meat is raised, or which companies create the toxic chemicals used on our food. We can make these types of decisions about ANYTHING; for instance, I bought recycled printer paper last week… it was a conscious choice. I guess what I’m saying is that I can’t really separate the personal and the political – and nor do I think it’s necessary to do so.

So, what that means here, at Hunter’s Design Studio, is that sometimes I get visibly political. While my life is full of fabric and patterns and friends who need a hand with their blog tours, it’s also full of thoughts and worries about things that are going on in the world. And when it weighs heavily on me, I write about it. It means that I’m going to say/write what I think, and that I’m going to take a stand – I don’t really know how to be any other way. It means I’ll listen to a well-reasoned response even if I don’t agree with it (and I think we ALL need to improve at listening to opposing views), but I’ll delete pure hate and hostility. It means that YOU get to know who you’re doing business with. And as I’ve said before, you are always welcome to not hang out here with me – just scroll by or unfollow; I will bid you adieu and wish you nothing but the best.

I’m taking a stand out in the world for the same things I have taken a stand for within the quilting industry as part of We Are $ew Worth It. I want women to earn as much as their male counterparts, and I want them recognized and respected equally. I want our industry and country to be fair and welcoming to our differences, and inclusive of the broad diversity we encompass. I want opportunities to be available to more than just the people of privilege. I want us to take care of each other in our dealings. I want every person to understand their value to their community, quilting or otherwise. And I really want us to start embracing the shades of gray in everything, rather than standing in rigid absolutes at the opposite poles of any argument.

So many bad things in history have happened because people were afraid to speak up. As women we are cultured to NOT speak up, to NOT rock the boat, to NOT make waves. As a woman business owner, the pressure to be seemly is doubled down with a dose of economic fear: don’t rock the boat or people might not buy your product. And I guess I’ll just have to roll with that because I’m done with being quiet about the things that outrage me, and the time for silence is long gone.

No, I’m not going to be ranting here daily, but you can count on me to have an opinion. And you can definitely count on me to speak up for people who need a champion.

Just wanted you to know that. And now that I’ve said it, maybe I can get back to writing other things too

The post The Personal and the Political appeared first on Hunter's Design Studio.

I’m pretty steamed.

I’ve discovered that someone who bought my Chunky Wee Zippy Pouches pattern has ripped it off, obviously believing the “just change 5 things or X percent and you’re safe” nonsense.

Whatever the nuts and bolts of copyright law might state about what is in the public domain and what can’t be protected on a pattern for a functional product, it’s just freaking WRONG to plagiarize someone else’s stuff to make money from it.

Look. Most of this industry is made up of nice women, women who often get railroaded by corporate policies that abuse our niceness. We should be looking out for each other, supporting each other, protecting each other. NOT STEALING FROM EACH OTHER. If you have to hide behind the minutiae of copyright law to justify your actions you KNOW you are doing something slimy. So don’t do it. Just DON’T.

If you want to write patterns, then by all means come up with an original idea, and find your way to executing it. When I set out to write this pattern, I hadn’t ever owned nor made any other zipper pouch pattern. I decided I wanted to make a pattern that had a formula for making ANY size you could dream up, and I made a dozen samples getting to that. Yes, I have boxed corners in bags before – there are really only two ways to do it – and I chose the technique that works most accurately for me for the pouch. I didn’t steal anyone’s drawings on how to construct the pouch, I looked at the one in my hand and drew my illustrations from observation. Is it the first ever zippy pouch pattern? Nope. Will it be the last? Nope. Is it all my own work? YES.

Designing is hard work. You have to have your finger on the pulse of the industry to keep current on trends, and at the same time, you need NOT to be looking at too much other stuff or it will pollute your head. For instance, if there is a trend of flying geese going on, by all means design something goose-y with your favorite construction method, but start with a blank slate when you do.

The person who stole my pattern came up with handles to add to it. If you have such an idea, the appropriate way to handle it is like Elizabeth at Occasional Piece did with her modifications to make a mini Sew Together Bag. She wrote her mods in such a way that they did not divulge the content of the original pattern, and then offered it for free on her blog. Bravo. New idea shared, original idea protected. Boom.

If you can’t generate your own ideas yet, you aren’t ready for the prime time arena of the pattern design industry. Despite what might look like overnight successes to an observer, it takes a LOT of work to become decent at this, and even those of us who’ve been at it a while sweat every pattern we attempt. You have to sew a LOT of other stuff to be able to discern and design good construction techniques, and you need to learn expensive software (or hire expensive help) to present your writing and drawings/photos well. What you don’t see is the seventeen tries to get it right before we send it out, nor the anguish that consumes us when, despite our best efforts, an error slips through. You don’t see the teams of unsung testers that help out. You don’t see the mounting scraps of expensive fabric sacrificed to the process. Pattern design involves several learning curves and shortcutting them with plagiarism is not only bad form, it cheats you of the skills you ought acquire to create a long lasting design career.

While I don’t think my plagiarist is an inherently evil or vindictive person*, her willingness to “dabble in pattern design” by dancing on my toes smacks of an ignorance born of casual disregard for what it takes to survive in this industry. She thought she could make a quick buck. While I fully acknowledge that I do this for money, there is no quick buck involved in a carefully crafted pattern. I have somewhere close to 60 hours invested in Chunky Wee Zippy Pouches, from pondering the first idea to sending the first pattern to a distributor, to say nothing of the fabric, fusibles and zippers I ate up along the way. I also write patterns because I care deeply about creating a happy experience for our makers. I want people to enjoy quilting so they do more of it, not give them poorly written crap that wastes their time and their fabric, not to mention makes them want to quit the craft.

While I’m angry that my pattern was poached, I’m even more frustrated with the time this has cost me – time I could have used to design something new to grow my pattern business. I have had to research copyright law, capture screen shots of her website and Facebook pages to support my case, consult my colleagues and legal team, talk to the person that did it (and no, it was no fun to do that), write a Cease and Desist letter, and make a trip to the post office to send it certified. I have had to send pictures of her patterns to my distributors to request that they not purchase them as they are based on mine. I’ve wasted a ton of time trying to get calm about it, and formulating an action plan. I probably could have made a whole new design in the time this has cost – and it’s a loss I’ll never recoup.

In conclusion, I just want to appeal to a higher morality amongst us, regardless of any convoluted points of law. Don’t steal from or undercut your fellow humans. We face enough battles without being attacked by people who should be our peers. Up your game and we all win, truly. #WASWI

Thanks for reading.

* I am choosing not to name this person, nor link to her because I believe that it could turn ugly. I’ve seen and experienced enough nasty internet hate to believe that few people, if any, who receive it, deserve it. I sincerely hope she appreciates that.

The post WASWI – One of My Patterns Has Been Plagiarized appeared first on Hunter's Design Studio.

Everybody loves a bargain. Scoring something on sale is a modern day hunter/gatherer coup of the first order, a proof positive that you are conducting your life with thrifty adult aplomb.

But the push for sale prices is eroding the quilting (and other) industries.

Many chain stores have resorted to constant discounting as a way to keep the sales moving, and what this has done is teach their buyers that the listed price of a thing is a number that only fools without coupons pay. And that even if you’re lacking the coupon or mobile store app, everything will be on sale at some point during the next six weeks if you’re willing to be patient.

This just isn’t sustainable. Putting things on sale is a great way to get some fast income, but it’s always followed by a slow period because your customers already spent their money. Once a store puts everything on sale all the time, it’s close to impossible to go back, and it dooms them to cutting back in other ways to make up the lost income.

The long standing formula for a retail price was one built to pay everyone decently at every tier. If I give you an example using one of my $10 patterns sold through a distributor to a store, the cut goes like this: I get $3.50 (out of which come my material costs), the distributor gets $1.50, and the store gets $5. The store gets the lion’s share because they bear the biggest cost of keeping the lights on and paying talented people to help you, and the highest cost per square foot of their retail space.

Let’s apply this to a chain store like Joann’s. If they are making it possible for you to buy that $10 pattern for $6 with a coupon, they are losing $4 on that sale. How that has manifested at Joann’s is that the stores have devolved to being (under)staffed by mostly part-time people (who get no benefits), who don’t know a voile from a velour, and who are mistreated by the company in ways that not a one of us would voluntarily subject ourselves to if other options were available.

And do we really want to be a part of making that happen?

This perpetual discount model has educated us to believe that a $32 rotary cutter is really a $19 product with the coupon. But if the true price (from one end of the manufacturing process to the store) is $32, then that’s what we should be paying.

The next problem with this is we take the “I want everything on sale” attitude to our local quilt stores. I’ll let you in on a secret… no one wakes up imagining that that the fast way to get rich is to own a quilt store. They work hard for the money. And for the most part, they are staffed with the kind of people that can calculate how much border fabric you need without missing a beat. Good quilt store employees are SKILLED workers, and so they deserve better than minimum wage. And if the store is doing it right, they are getting the latest and greatest for you, and making samples of it to inspire you (even my speediest quilts take me a couple of days each to finish). There is a LOT of love in the labor.

Trust me – I know that quilting is expensive. But I also know that it is, as my dear friend Maddie Kertay at BadAss Quilters’ Society once said to me, a luxury sport. If you want to play it, there is a certain investment in the equipment that goes with the game. You are not going to die if you don’t quilt. While it might be emotionally necessary to your well-being, it isn’t critical like food, or heating, or gas for your car.

No one OWES you the right to quilt, nor to have the materials and tools for cheap. If you want to quilt cheaply, you absolutely can. You can acquire the fabrics at thrift stores and opt for doing it all by hand, dispensing with the need for a machine – or scour the same thrift stores for a lucky machine find. If your income is fixed (and seriously, whose isn’t?) you definitely have decisions to make regarding where you spend your pennies. But just because you want it cheaper doesn’t mean you get to have it cheaper – if that logic were true I’d be demanding my rightful Porsche, and my McMansion with singing woodland creatures to keep it clean for me!

If we, as consumers, don’t start supporting the small businesses, they will disappear (just look at dearth of bookstores). There will be no local quilt shop with the carefully curated fabric selection, nor the sweet woman who works on Wednesdays and knows how to find the exact blue you need. All there will be is a sea of chain stores with limited selection and harried staff who can’t help you beyond pointing down the aisle.

Yes, I know, buying a new rotary blade full price might cost you the equivalent of two frothy coffees instead of one (or three fat quarters instead of two), but consider it an investment in having the best quilting community possible. You want to be a part of that, right? Yes! Because otherwise, we’ll be condemning ourselves to nothing more than chain stores.

At some point each of us needs to step up to invest in the health of our industry. Consider it the quilting version of eating your spinach or whipping up a green smoothie.

It’s in our hands. Let’s go do something about it.

~~

For other reads on this:

• Megan Dougherty’s peek behind the green curtain at Joann’s (read the comments, too)
• Maddie Kertay’s Quilt Shop Confidential series 1, 2 and 3
• Ebony Love’s discussions (1 and 2) on pricing her online class offerings.

The post The High Cost of Discount Pricing appeared first on Hunter's Design Studio.

No Value Does Not Equal Free by Molli Sparkles (quilted by Jane Davidson)

It was SO GREAT to meet this guy! And really great to meet someone you’ve only “internet” known, and to find out that you really DO like them – he’s a classy guy! This quilt was the one he made in response to my WASWI campaign, and my friend Jane Davidson did the long arm honors. I was so thrilled to take a picture of us together that I missed getting details of the quilt, but you can see those on Molli’s blog.

Eichler Homes – Mickey Beebe (quilted by Tami Levin)

The magic in this quilt is all in the details… check out the echoed outlines on the houses, complete with little details like TV antennas. A perfect homage to the illustrations of the era, and probably my top pick of the show.

ZAG by Kari Anderson

The confident and careful use of color and pattern texture on this quilt is wonderful, and all that ORANGE made me happy!

Balancing Act by Stephanie Ruyle

I adore the mid-century vibe and coloring of this piece.

Bursting Blues by AnnMarie Cowley

AnnMarie is a member of my guild, and frankly, she is an artist to watch. She does some really innovative work, with impeccable craftsmanship. It was a thrill to see her work included.

Bump and Grind by Rebecca Burnett

This was hanging in the Northcott Booth, and stopped me in my tracks with all its ORANGE and teal goodness.

The Modern Strip Quilt by Vicki Ruebel and members of the Las Vegas MQG

This quilt is notable for the use of colored thread in the quilting to affect a change in the fabric color. Very cleverly done (although I thought the technique might render it a bit stiff for cuddling).

Itsy Bitsy Hexie Quilt by Sofia Locke

This was in the Youth category – great use of fussy-cut fabrics, and lovely craftsmanship. We should keep an eye on this young lady!

Graphics 1 by Kerri Green

I’m a text junkie. I love how the text was used, and it reminds me of great letterpress work.

Falling by Kathy York

This one just made me smile. Sometimes that’s the most important thing Lovely accent quilting done by hand, too.

Geometric Text by Nicole Daksiewicz

Another fine exploration of text, and I appreciate the skill in keeping the words aligned throughout the pieces.

The Color of Squares by Juli Smith

How could I not love all that ORANGE? Great graphic qualities too.

The post Favorites from QuiltCon appeared first on Hunter's Design Studio.

She contacted the pattern author, and found out that this is not how the patterns are produced. So somewhere along the distribution chain, it looks like this pattern might have been copied for re-sale.

Obviously, this is theft and fraud, not to mention very damaging to a designer’s livelihood and reputation as well. And just as obviously, a designer like me has no real way to police it. So I ask this favor of you: if you see a poorly produced copy of a pattern for sale, PLEASE contact the designer to let us know. If it’s getting stolen, we need to know. And if it’s a production snafu, we should know that too, so we can get a clean copy into your hands!

Many thanks to Janna Bailey for letting me tell this story, and for carrying the WASWI torch! Her original words (with her permission) are here:

Had an odd thing happen at PIQF this last October (2015). I purchased a pattern from a vendor and took it up to my room and opened it. The pattern looked like it was copied many,many times. Very grayed. I took it back down to the vendor. The owner was not there but the employee pulled out 3 more patterns and they were all just as bad. I wanted my $ back and was going to write a scathing note to the pattern maker. The employee said I had to come back the next day and talk to the owner. I went back to the vendor the next morning and she said she found a better pattern. I opened it and it was just fine. After thinking about it, I emailed the pattern maker anyway…but rather than berating her for a lousy pattern, I explained the situation and asked the question, “did you make the copies or was the vendor cheating you out of profits by making her own copies”. The pattern owner wrote back and thanked me, because she said all her patterns were clear copies. So I’d check patterns before you buy them and make sure they are clean and clear. And if not, I’d send a note to the pattern maker. It’s not fair that they should be losing their profits to a disreputable vendor. 

The post WASWI: Let designers know if you see their patterns copied appeared first on Hunter's Design Studio.

First: Karen McTavish on the Crafty Planner Podcast. At about minute 42, Sandi and Karen start discussing the pricing for long-arm services. Karen makes her version of the point I’m always trying to make: When you undercut yourself, you undercut EVERYONE. She believes that as you get better, you should raise your prices, then the new folks coming up behind you can earn a decent rate too. AMEN.

The rest of the podcast is great also, as Karen talks about her unlikely journey to being the Karen McTavish – and she’s a funny lady to boot!

Second: This WONDERFUL video shows how nuts it is to be asked to work for free in other industries outside of the arts. In two and a half very short minutes, the point is beautifully made, especially by the old chap in the restaurant! There are some great points about being a professional who gets paid for their time, and keeping ownership of one’s intellectual property.

We Are $ew Worth It!

The post WASWI – Raising your prices, not working for free appeared first on Hunter's Design Studio.