Apparently we decided that the second half of the year was a perfectly reasonable time to do approximately twelve things at once.

There’s a lot happening behind the scenes at CUT/SEW right now – some of it very big, some of it very silly, and some of it involving an alarming number of poorly constructed balloon animals. (More on that soon, dear reader.)

Rather than cram everything into one enormous newsletter paragraph, here’s a little rundown of what we’ve been up to lately:

CUT/SEW is coming to more local shops!

One of our biggest goals at H+H this year was convincing more of the traditional sewing and craft industry that cosplayers are, in fact, people who buy sewing supplies. (A wild concept, we know.)

And we made some real progress!

After the show, CUT/SEW signed with two new distributors, which means our sewing patterns can now make their way into even more independent fabric, sewing, and craft stores.

That said, there’s still a lot of work to do. Many shops are only beginning to understand just how large – and underserved – the cosplay community is.

So if there’s a local fabric or craft store you love and you’d like to see CUT/SEW patterns there, tell them! Asking your favorite shop to carry more cosplay-friendly products genuinely helps demonstrate that the demand exists.

The cosplay section of the fabric store cannot remain three sad bolts of polyester satin forever.

Somehow, CUT/SEW is 10 years old

That feels fake!

CUT/SEW officially celebrated its 10th anniversary over ColossalCon Prime weekend, so naturally we marked the occasion by throwing the business a children’s birthday party.

There were free cupcakes. There were decorations. There were clowns.*

*The clowns were us.

There were also some extremely questionable balloon animals, which we will not be adding to our professional skill sets at this time.

We’re continuing the celebration with a limited-edition CUT/SEW 10th Anniversary shirt, made in a very small run just for the occasion. They’ll be hitting our website within the next couple of weeks and once they’re gone, they’re gone.

Ten years of sewing patterns, conventions, classes, late-night packing sessions, weird ideas that somehow turned into real products, and an incredible community that let us keep doing all of it. Not bad for something that started in a living room (and has now moved to a spare room. We're moving on up!)

Introducing: CUT/SEW’s Craft Club 💌

Okay, this one is still cooking, but we’re very excited about it.

We’re working on a new low-cost, monthly snail mail subscription called CUT/SEW’s Craft Club, built around the extremely simple idea that crafting together is rad and getting mail is even radder.

Each month will revolve around a new creative theme, with things like personalized letters, stickers, craft suggestions, prompts, and little surprises arriving in your mailbox.

Craft Club members will also get access to a special channel in the CUT/SEW Discord where we’ll share projects, talk about what everyone’s making, and hold casual group crafting hangouts.

Basically: part pen pal club, part craft night, part excuse to actually use the supplies sitting in your craft drawer.

We’ll have much more to share about memberships, themes, and launch details soon.

Yes, new sewing patterns are coming

We know. We KNOW.

Between conventions, workshops, wholesale, retailer education, new partnerships, and the approximately 400 other things happening around here, our pattern development schedule has been moving more slowly than we’d like.

But things are happening behind the curtain.

We currently have three new CUT/SEW sewing patterns in development, all planned for release over the coming months.

We’re keeping the actual designs under wraps for just a little longer, but the pattern drought is nearing its end.

Thank you for your patience while we attempt to grow several completely different parts of this business at the exact same time like responsible adults.

We’re partnering with Oliso!

Starting this September, you’ll begin seeing select Oliso products at the CUT/SEW booth, including items from their Yaya Han collection.

We’ve wanted to make it easier to grab more of the tools and supplies we genuinely like using alongside our patterns, so this is another little step toward making CUT/SEW more of a one-stop shop for cosplay sewing.

We’ll be bringing select Oliso products to conventions with us, and you’ll also see some of them make their way onto our website for online ordering.

Patterns, tools, machines, supplies... apparently we are slowly assembling the craft store we wanted to shop at all along.

 

Anyway, that’s what we’ve been doing.

There’s a lot changing at CUT/SEW right now, but the goal behind all of it is pretty much the same one we started with ten years ago: make sewing and cosplay a little easier to get into.

Thanks for being here while we figure out what the next ten years look like.

Hopefully they involve fewer balloon animals.

(Unless...?)