SEO for Selling Handmade or Homemade Items Online

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Last month I shared with you all my top 9 Simple Tips for Selling Homemade Goods and I want to follow that up with some more details on how you can easily implement SEO tips & tricks into your current marketing and business practices.

If you have an existing business selling homemade goods, then you likely already have some sort of online presence, whether that be a website, social media, or online selling platform. Your homemade goods company’s web-based presence can easily be categorized into two main segments:

  1. Where your sales are happening (Etsy, Amazon, your own site, etc)
  2. Where you engage with potential buyers and market your products (social media, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.)

These basic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) principles will work in both forms of your business’ online presence but you’ll shift them just slightly to get the best bang for your buck! Continue reading →

The Ultimate Homemade Girls Dress

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If you’ve been following along with my sewing lately you may have noticed an increase in garments popping up on my photo feed! Believe it or not, I actually started my sewing journey with garments and kind of stopped for a few years when quilts completely took over my life.

One of my goals for this year has been to increase my garment sewing so I did what I like to do: found amazing fabrics and killer patterns and dove right in! Continue reading →

The Sewing Machine that Teaches You How to Sew

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Beginner’s Guide to JoyOS ADVISOR™

This post is for all you high-tech high-quality sewing machine lovers out there! Did you know there is a way to have sewing instructions and tutorials completely integrated into your sewing machine?! It’s practically like having a sewing teacher that lives inside your machine!

Image result for hjoyosadvisor app

Since getting my HUSQVARNA® VIKING® DESIGNER BRILLIANCE™ 80 sewing/embroidery machine I have actually learned SO much about sewing, quilting, embroidery, materials, stabilizer, thread, stitch length, and well, a lot of stuff! One of my favorite features on this new HUSQVARNA® VIKING® machine (that I was not expecting to find so impactful) is the JoyOS ADVISOR™ which came built into the machine. Continue reading →

How to Upcycle Clothing: What Dave Ramsey and Marie Kondo Taught Me About Fashion

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Do you love to sew but get tired of how expensive quality fabric can be? Have you noticed that it actually can be much cheaper just to buy clothes at the big box/department store than to make them yourself? Or maybe you’re like me and you just want to actually wear the items in your closet that keep sitting there taking up precious space!

Marie Kondo taught me to only keep the clothing items that Spark Joy, but Dave Ramsey taught me to use what I have & live frugally! Guess what happens when you combine the love of living debt free with the love of keeping things tidy? I learned how to revamp my wardrobe without spending a dime! Do you want to learn how to have new clothing for free too?

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Birds Hill Quilt Pattern

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The Birds Hill Quilt Pattern by @theblanketstatement is a fun, modern twist on a simple, versatile, quilt block – the Half Square Triangle, also known as the “HST”. For anyone new to quilting, the HST is a total staple and one of my BFF quilt blocks.

I was lucky enough to be a pattern tester for Erin on this project and I am really thrilled with how my baby size Birds Hill Quilt turned out! I’m writing this blog post for you so I can share my experience with the pattern, tips & tricks to make it easier, AND how to make it SUPER easy by cutting the pieces with an AccuQuilt Go! fabric cutting machine.

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How to Label Your Quilt

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Do you label your quilts?

I love to make custom embroidered quilt labels and even sell them in my Etsy shop for other quilters! If you want to learn my secrets to how I make high quality, personal embroidered quilt labels, keep reading.

Many quilters think they SHOULD make labels for their quilts, but don’t really get around to it. It’s tough; I understand the desire to just move onto the next quilt project & keep those creative juices flowing! There are so many beautiful designs out there, and don’t we all have 4 million quilts to make on our Pinterest boards?

If you’d rather speed up the process and move onto your next project quicker, I’m here to help with that too: Check out my listing on Etsy to commission me to make your very own customized quilt label.

Continue reading →

Me Made Molly Dress

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My garment sewing saga continues! If you haven’t seen my “Me Made May” blog post check out the peplum top I made to try out sewing with Rayon! Making the Peplum top has re-acquainted me with the wonderful world of garment sewing and got me a lot more comfortable with sewing with rayon (as opposed to the 100% cotton that I use in quilting!) That blog post also shares some of the tips and tricks I learned along the way – If you want to try some garment sewing, that is a great place to get started!

Now that I’ve been bit by the garment sewing bug, I decided to make myself a dress: a dress that I actually bought the pattern for 2 years ago! It’s definitely been a long time coming.   Continue reading →

Using AccuQuilt for Designer Quilt Patterns

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Have you seen the AccuQuilt fabric cutting system and wondered if you’d still be able to make the quilts from your favorite quilt pattern designers? With some creativity and a little math, you definitely CAN use your AccuQuilt die cut machine to make nearly any designer quilt pattern! I am here to teach you exactly how you can convert a designer quilt pattern into an AccuQuilt pattern, and I’ll show you how I made the Indian Summer quilt by @suzyquilts using my AccuQuilt Go!  as the example. I used my AccuQuilt Go! to cut out all the fabrics and save a ton of time in the process!

You can download the baby size pattern of this quilt for FREE here, or if you are feeling more ambitious, you can snag the throw version of the pattern in Suzy’s shop. I wrote these instructions with the baby version in mind, but by the end of this post you should feel comfortable and confident in your abilities to make the throw work for you as well! Continue reading →

Reflections Quilt Pattern Review

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Are you into awesome quilt patterns that hype up long lines and geometry? If yes, then I am 99% sure you already follow @SuzyQuilts. If you don’t, click this link right now. Suzy probably doesn’t know this, but she has been one of my quilt mentors for literal years. In 2014 when I decided to start an Instagram specifically to log my quilt progress, her account was one of the first I found that allowed me to see quilting as a fun modern thing that hip young people are into too. I loved that she played with crazy fun colors and shared just as much of her heart as her abounding creativity. I was drawn in by her cool downtown Chicago apartment (at the time), super cute dog Scrappy, and ability to break down quilting in a way that makes even tricky steps look easy.

OK, OK, that is enough about my obsession with Suzy. I am here to tell you about her newest quilt pattern: Reflections!

The Reflections Quilt Pattern is beginner friendly and comes in 5 awesome sizes: Baby, Throw, Twin, Full/Queen, and King! As per my usual, I decided to make the Baby size which finishes off at 40″ x 40″. Continue reading →