Sewing – Knit-Spin-Quilt

Covid-19 Shop Update

Hello to everyone. I hope you and your loved ones are holding up in these trying circumstances. I won’t tell you to be chipper or keep your chin up: I will tell you that I wish you all the best.

Things have been exciting here: I am holed up out of NYC with a dear friend. Since the shop is my only form of income, and most of it is in Brooklyn, I have been scrambling to get ducks in a row. I am safe: I am sheltering in place at home. I have arranged mail pick-up once a week, and I sew in my bedroom, so I am able to keep going for the time being.

I will be focusing on drawstring bags and DPN cases at first. If you have a particular request, PLEASE tell me. My contact form, Instagram DMs, Twitter DMs and email are all open to you, dear customers. If I have access to the fabric in question, I will be happy to sew up a custom bag at no additional cost. (I do hope you’ll understand that my access to fabric is limited at the moment, due to circumstances beyond my control.)

Because I believe strongly in putting my money where my mouth is, KnitSpinQuilt will continue to donate 15% of item prices to charity. In 2020, I have chosen the Ali Forney Center, a charity that works to alleviate homelessness in LGBTQ youth in New York City. The Ali Forney Center cannot close under current circumstances, because it provides housing to at-risk youth, and is in need of support now more than ever.

Please keep safe, keep indoors, and keep on keeping on. This is going to be hard, but the only way forward is through.

Down to the Wire — in the best way!

I’m prepping up a storm right now, because I’m delighted to announce (belatedly!) that I will be a vendor at the Indie Untangled Trunk Show in (eeek) less than three weeks.

Find me at booth 23 with One Geek To Craft Them All!

I’ll have DPN cases and box bags:

Pile of fabric double pointed needle cases in several prints

Photograph of stacked box bags in a variety of fabrics

I’ll also have a lot of drawstring bags, which I’m still frantically sewing up:

Stack of drawstring bags inside out half-sewn with coral fabric and rotary cutter

Come by and say hi! And watch this space later this week for a very exciting announcement!

Label Review

Today’s blog post is a product review. Dutch Label Shop reached out to me some time ago and offered me the chance to try out their custom woven labels in exchange for a blog post, positive or negative: whatever I had to say, they wanted to know.

I’m delighted to be able to say that I really like these labels.

My previous solution for labels in bags was printable fabric. I’d print out a sheet (pictured below) and cut each label out with a rotary cutter and ruler, then iron them all in half. Definitely less expensive than buying labels, until you factor in time. And, honestly, I don’t think they look nearly as good.

Sheet of printable fabric with KnitSpinQuilt printed repeatedly

Dutch Label Shop worked with me to create custom text labels (they also do images, and stock labels) that suited my needs.

Two woven labels reading KnitSpinQuilt and giving the KSQ shop URL

These labels, which I had made to my desired size, are sturdy, look professional, and can be customized on both sides, which means I can have my shop URL on the tag, saving anyone who wants to look me up the step of googling my name.

The insides of the labels are clean with good floats, and I haven’t had trouble with fraying yet — and I’ve used nearly 250 of them so far.

Image of the inside of a woven fabric label

But of course, a label can look great on the table, and not look so good on a product. I needn’t have worried about that, either – the way these are made, I added a seam allowance to be sewn in, and I think they work really well.

I think the legibility of the smaller text might be improved upon in future orders, but I also created labels that are a technical challenge for the weight of thread they weave with, so some of that difficulty is on my head.

The process of creating the labels was a cinch: I went to their site, customized what I wanted on a web form, and uploaded the images. Their customer service reps have been responsive, and I’ve been pleased.

I know some bloggers do sponsored posts without telling you they’re sponsored: I never have and never will. One of the things I was very up front about with Dutch Label Shop when they asked me to do this blog post in exchange for a coupon was the fact that if I didn’t like their product, I’d still blog about it, and speak my mind. They were fine with that — and it turns out they were right to have faith in their product.

If you’d like to try out Dutch Label Shop, I’m happy to be able to give you a referral code: knitspinquilt15, which will be good for 60 days from today.