Are you sure you want to do this?

This is always the first question I ask when I'm starting a new venture. This is the question I should have asked myself when I started my custom sewing business back in 1981. It wasn't so much that I made a decision to open a custom sewing shop. More like, I had one foot in the hole, and I gradually lost my hold on reality and fell in all the way. I grew up sewing. It was a craft I could do pretty well, and I learned how to do it better and better with each project. But there were some pitfalls that only became apparent in hindsight. That means, if I'd known then what I know now, I might have made a different choice!

Welcome to the Seamier Side of Sewing for Survival! Here is where I will share with you what I learned when I was self-employed as a custom clothing designer. Or you could call me a seamstress, I don't care. And I will share what I've learned about business, marketing, and customer service. Now I teach business, marketing, and computer classes at a career college. I will use examples from my own venture to help you with yours. In other words, don't do what I did! I made every mistake it is possible to make, I think.

Here are some mistakes I made. You can find solutions to (some of) these problems on the Before you begin page.

1. I had no business plan.
2. I had no advice from professionals.
3. For an embarrassingly long time, I didn't have a business bank account.
4. I had no bookkeeper, no accountant, no personal banker, just a bunch of maxed out credit cards. (This was back in the day when I was thrilled to have a 16% interest rate on my Visa card.)
5. I had no recordkeeping systems (those were pre-computer days, too).
6. Believe it or not, when I started sewing for money, all I had was a used Singer 503A machine I had received for high school graduation. (I won't tell you how long ago that was, but I will say if that thing hadn't been stolen, it would still be running, that's how great of a machine it was.)
7. I worked out of my boyfriend's garlic-filled kitchen until I could find a studio space I could afford. The first place I found couldn't be found by any of my customers, it was so inaccessible. The second place was next door to a massage parlor (more on that later).
8. And worst of all, I hated to sew.

More on that later, too. For now I'll just say that my ten-plus years of sewing for a living gave me a rich, somewhat fetid body of experience to share with you. Now I know what not to do. I can save you money, time, and tears. And probably blood and sweat, too, but that will cost a little extra. Kidding.

So, stay tuned as I attempt to fill in these pages with information you can start using right away. I'd say “Happy sewing!” but I wouldn't really mean it. Instead I'll just say, “Here there be dragons! Abandon hope all ye who enter here, the Seamier Side of Sewing for Survival!”