A Plea for Space and Dreaming about the Blog's Future

I'd like to share a little bit about what's on my mind in regards to my future costuming and the continuation of this blog.

Okay, so some housekeeping business first. I love getting messages about how much you all appreciate my blog posts - those are fine! But please hold off on the questions for now. I am having a few better days (drawing and knitting are happening in small quantities) but I'm still not up to sewing, and definitely not even close to discussing future costume commissions again. Right now I need to rest and heal, and getting costume queries not only by e-mail, but also via my dishcloth etsy shop (which is now on vacation for the time being) and instagram is stressful for me and not a good use of your time. When I do have time to deal with work stuff, I have so much to do with already commissioned pieces that I can't spend energy on giving costume quotes for pieces that I may not have time to make for years.

(Really, when I say I can't handle work correspondence right now, I do mean it. Ignoring the boundaries I'm requesting for my health/sanity is not going to endear me to making you a costume.)

But I'm going to make costumes again in 2016, right? Can't I just give a cost query now? Well, apart from the fact that I have a lot of trouble keeping up with cost queries even when my inbox is open, we're honestly not sure whether I'm going to be able to do more than a couple pieces next year (and one of them is already spoken for by a long-time customer). Plus, when my health stabilizes, we are at the point where we want my energy to go to having/raising/homeschooling our still-in-the-future-but-much-wanted kids, so we're not sure how much professional sewing I will have time/energy to do - that's part of why I'm focusing more on the writing and towel embroidery business, as they are both a little easier to work around having kids. 

But don't worry, I still plan to maintain this blog, as I dearly love sharing my love of costuming. Even when we do have kids, I'll definitely keep sewing, it'll just be mostly for us rather than clients with deadlines that my health currently can't handle. Plus, there are the costume reviews for shows like OUAT which are so fun to do! (but they are time consuming, which is why I have to hold myself back from doing them. They're fun, but they're quite a bit of work and right now the blog is sort of slipping back to hobby status, since I'm not taking costume commissions right now. Which is frustrating but not something I can control, other than continuing to try to get well.)

Actually, a dream of mine would be to find a way for this blog to make money so I could spend more time creating and sharing costuming resources. I would love to do a "use this pattern to make this costume" series and provide more info on techniques and resources. The problem is that would be a LOT of work that I just can't justify right now without getting paid... plus the costumes you all really want to know about are the ones connected to trademark properties - I can't just write a  "how to sew OUAT costumes" book without all sorts of official licenses that I'm not in a position to go after. I don't think I could do a Patreon sort of situation without getting in trouble. I may write a longer post about this at some point and solicit suggestions as I'm pretty much out of ideas for making this happen. I've been brainstorming for years about how to make even a little income running this blog and have never come up with a good solution (from all I have ever heard, blog ads are not worth the trouble). 

And yes, I AM still planning to write my costume sewing book, I just have to get through a mound of costume and towel commissions, finish my fiction book edits (yes, editors, it's coming!), make CHRISTMAS gifts (already???) and sew some much needed clothes from the fabric I have already purchased... after my health has finally improved enough to sew. (People don't believe how much energy sewing takes, until they do it themselves. My husband found this out when he volunteered to take on a big ironing project for me... and he's pretty fit!)