A little secret side project….

So, you may (or may not) have noticed that I haven’t been posting quite as much over the last couple of months. It’s not because I don’t love you, or because I haven’t been sewing up a storm. Not at all.

Instead, it’s because what I’ve been working on hasn’t been able to be shown yet.

But that’s all changing, as of right now. I am currently rather excited, and also in no small measure terrified. Eep!

Wanna know why?

Because I just launched this.

Yep, I’ve been busily beavering away for the last few months on designing and creating my first not-just-for-me pattern, and getting a brand-new pattern label all ready to go.

I’ve called it Muse Patterns. All the designs are (and will be) inspired by amazing women – both current, and historical. Women who are courageous, intelligent, and inspirational. The first few patterns are inspired by women I know (this first one is inspired by my amazing little sister, Jen), and after that, well, I’m gonna keep that a surprise for now. 😉

And as those who’ve know me for a while know, I’m a huge fan of vintage styles, especially from the 1930’s, 1940s and 1950’s (even though I’ve been on an indie patterns kick recently!), so there’s a fair bit of historical influences that will be popping in Muse designs as well. (While at the same time keeping them fresh and modern.)

The first pattern is the Jenna cardi – it’s designed to be a wardrobe staple, and very versatile, with three different sleeve length options, two different body length options, and two shoulder options, so you can mix-and-match for 12 different combinations. There’s a bit of 1940’s going on with curved front shoulder yoke detailing, and a touch of 1940’s and 1950’s with the waist-length variation with wide hem band.

And I may have made, well, a heck of a lot of these over the past couple of months while creating and testing the pattern. Hah!! Long ones, short ones, different sleeve lengths, playing with colour blocking, etc, etc. Now that Muse and the Jenna cardi are ‘officially’ launched (as of when I hit ‘publish’ on this post – eek!), I’ll be able to start showing what I’ve been making. (Don’t worry though, I’m not gonna be turning this blog into a ‘Muse’ blog – it’ll stay as it always has been, and Muse will be it’s own separate identity.)

Anyways, I’m pretty proud of this pattern – it’s been a heck of a lot of work, I’ve learnt a huge amount from doing it (how to set up an online shop, how much Paypal irritates me with it’s help questions, how to use Illustrator, etc, etc), and even if no one else like it or buys it I now have a cardigan pattern that I love making and wearing so it’ll be getting a lot of use in my sewing room at least. 😉

I also wanna give a huge massive shouted-out THANK YOU!!!! to all the UTTERLY AMAZING people who have helped me get this up and running. You know who you are, and you’ve all been awesome – giving feedback, giving encouragement when I wanted to throw my laptop out the window, testing the pattern, being models for me, all that stuff. Huge huge hugs to you all!! 😀

So yeah, there’s my secret project – now out in the open.

And just coz I can, here’s a discount code if any of you are interested in the pattern. Enter ‘CUPCAKES’ at check-out and you’ll get 20% off until 6 September. (Important note: Paypal does discount codes in a slightly odd way – you’re prompted for them after entering your payment details, whereas most other online payment systems ask for them first. Don’t worry – the option to enter the code will come up and the discount applied between now and 6 September!)

And also just coz I can, here’s a giveaway, too. Comment here, let me know which style you’d make first, and I’ll give a copy of the Jenna cardi pattern away to someone via random draw. If you want to go in the giveaway, comment by the end of Wednesday 3 September – I’ll draw the winner and contact them on Thursday 4th.

The giveaway is now closed – congrats to the winners! 🙂

And on that note, I’m going to go and eat a heck of a lot of chocolate and cheese and try to stop myself from biting my fingernails now that I’ve let this baby of mine loose into the world. Eek!!!