I smell a change

I'm on the Etsy front page right now, yay.

I've been doing some thinking and I've decided to no longer make clothing from scratch, and instead concentrate on reconstructing. This is for a few reasons:

• Making items from scratch usually meant buying factory remnant fabric. This seems kind of like buying regular recycled paper instead of post-consumer paper. Recycled paper is made from the offcuts from paper mills (so maybe not truly recycled?), and post-consumer recycled paper has been used by the consumer, then recycled and made into new paper. It's still better than buying new, but post-consumer is better still, no?
• I wasn't making much of a wage, much less profit. I've now restructured my prices and created a comprehensive spreadsheet including ALL of my costs. Previously I just set my prices at what I thought they were worth, plus factored in some kind of wage. It wasn't very formal. Now that I'm starting to do more wholesaling, I've really had to work this out properly.
• Everything I make will definitely be one-of-a-kind now. I previously had the idea to do a made to order collection, choose your own size and I'll make you a copy kind of thing, but I think there's something special about having something that's yours, and yours only.
• It means I can make more things and list more regularly. Making things from scratch often took triple the time of a reconstruction that ends up the same level of pretty at the end.

I've been doing the reconstructing all of this week. I've become enamoured with gathering, so expect to see lots of frills and cute little flutter sleeves like this one:

M piece by piece dress

I've also been working on warmer designs - wool jumpers and long-sleeved things. If you'd like to see more of anything in particular, please do let me know.