I don't have any kind of witty or silly blog post heading for this month. Things have been heavy and a fluffy post doesn't seem right.
Generally, my monthly updates consist of me, looking back on the past month (May in this case) and mapping out my plans for the coming month (June). But I wanted to do something a bit different. This will be more of a journaling type of post, where I share my current thoughts in a hopefully-not-too-rambly sort of way. I hope you all don't mind.
I probably should have written this in the morning when my mind was a bit more sharp and not buzzing around from a day filled with activities, but here we are. I have been sharing a bit on IG about how I hope to shift Untitled Thoughts in the coming months. Being that I am a fairly new brand (officially became a business at the start of this year!), I am not set in any sort of "ways" that a larger company might be. It's just me, and even though the work load can feel overwhelming at times, there are a lot of perks to being the only person behind a brand.
One of those perks is that I can pivot fairly quickly and enact change almost immediately. For example, in regards to sizing, my very very very very first pattern, the Stella Dress, only came in 4 or 5 sizes. At the time, I was incredibly insecure about my grading skills and I had never launched a pattern so everything was very big and overwhelming and quite possibly a bit disastrous (the files were lost in a hard drive crash, so I can;t actually see them any longer).
But size inclusivity has always been a really important thing to me. When I was designing custom garments for people, my favorite thing was that I could create a custom dress to fit the body of my clients. Size didn't matter. All that mattered was us working together to come up with something amazing that they felt like a superstar in!
So I knew with patterning, I would want my sizing to be much more inclusive. It took me a bit of time to learn the nuances in grading at different sizes, but it honestly wasn't as hard as I had thought! I was able to hunker down and do the work and came out the other side with patterns that better fit my ethos. And I am so thankful for doing that because nothing lights me up more than seeing people from around the world feeling confident in clothing they made from something I dreamed up!
And now I would like to do the same thing.
I am no longer a singular person operating an IG page to share my personal makes (though I still sometimes share those!). I want to do better and lift up others in new and exciting ways! I remember what it was like to get re-shared on a big indie pattern designers page- I felt like the coolest person because I felt like my voice mattered.
And your voice matters, too. It matters a lot to me. Untitled Thoughts would literally be nothing and nowhere without all of you who support it. And I know that I can't express enough how grateful I am to each and every sewist who believes in me and my vision and my patterns. It's almost scary how much faith you all have in me, but it gets me through a lot of my own self-doubt, and I have a LOT of self-doubt.
So what might you expect to change in the coming months here at Untitled Thoughts?
Well, I have been chatting and brainstorming a lot with others in the community, and there are a TON of ideas floating around. I have mentioned before that I will be taking the summer off after my next two pattern releases. I will be using that time to map out some long-term, sustainable systems to implement into my baby business. It's been less than a year, so now is the best time to really lay a great foundation that can be built on in the future without feeling overwhelmed or stressed or like everything has to be taken apart before being put back together.
The Sandrine, which is my next pattern, to-be-released on June 10th, 2020, will have 10% of all purchases donated to Struggles to Strengths. I know that I stated on IG that I was planning to donate a portion of every Sandrine sale to Campaign Zero. However, after talking to a few people in the community and getting a lot of wonderful advice from @virginia.wool.f , it made more sense for me to focus my efforts on local organizations that are doing really great work, both in social justice and in environmentalism!
Bigger organizations are able to garner a lot more donations on a national and global scale, whereas smaller organizations might not get the help they need. Plus, as Chelsea mentioned in our conversation, it's more meaningful to watch that energetic impact unfold within your community. It's like a ripple effect where one things leads to another and another and nothing but goodness comes about! I now have a list of organizations that I am excited to give back to in whatever way I can and will continue to add to that list!
I actually just finished having an incredibly energizing conversation with Chelsea, and now my head is spinning with even more possibilities! If you would like to read more of my plans for the future of Untitled Thoughts, feel free to check out my IG post detailing some of my actionable items as well as my latest newsletter where I talk a bit more about the changes I plan to make.