Howdy Stitchers and Stitcherettes!

Spankin' New Webbity Goodness!
SEW many of you are new to the Stitch Lab and that is seriously wonderful—we're beyond thrilled that sewing and the textile arts are enjoying such a huge renaissance here in Austin and across the country. We also have our beloved regulars who have been taking classes with us since the very beginning, 8 years ago when I started teaching in the sweet little studio building behind my home on S. 3rd Street.

Today (at 3:45 PM) we will launch our spankin’ new and much improved website, designed by Rachel Hobson (aka Average Jane Crafter), brilliant Craftzine.com contributing writer and former Stitch Lab assistant. Over the years, I've been super fortunate to have had some really wonderful studio assistants. Each one has contributed a highly valued key ingredient to making the Lab so special and helping it run more efficiently. Seriously, when I started teaching classes, I had no website, took enrollments by phone and wrote everything down in a spiral notebook. Of course that's when we were only offering about 3 classes per week! Rachel's unbridled enthusiasm (you should hear her laugh!) for the Stitch Lab and her delightful sense of design, paired with some badass computer skills, gave us a brighter, sassier and more efficient schedule page on the old site, among other improvements to enrollments. I knew that I wanted that same spirit and talent to take us to the next level with this new website—one that could be fully tricked out, with a modern, yet vintage, flavor that Rachel absolutely gets. Rachel, my fantastic current assistant, Carol, and I have been working our tushies off for months on the content and functional details of this new site.

Rachel has given us all kinds of yummy bells and whistles, such as: our new FAQ page; a Resources page with our ongoing Notable Notions feature articles; Links to all our fave local and online sources for materials, machine repair, contract sewing and alterations folks, the most inspiring blogs we love and our Sewing Machine/Serger purchasing and repair recommendations. The News page is where I’ll post all the new goodies that just arrived in the shop, announce new classes, special events and anything juicy you SEW need to KNOW!

Big Enrollment Changes and New Class Schedule
One thing you wanna know is that when you’re on the Stitch Lab website and you click on a class to enroll yourself, you will be taken to Mind Body Online, which is our new scheduling, enrollment and payment site. When you go there, you might notice you’re already in their client system—this is because you’ve taken a class from us recently, or you're enrolled in a future class. You’ll just make up a password so you can return to the site and easily sign up again in the future, if you desire. If you find that you’re not in the Mind Body system, it’s super easy to enter a user name and password. Having your info will help us immensely in contacting you about your classes, and also give fun rewards to those of you who have signed up for a million classes! Please let us know if you’re experiencing any difficulties.

Once you’ve had a chance to take a look around we would LOVE your feedback on the new site. Explore every nook and cranny! We need fresh eyes to let us know where we can make improvements or point out any goofs, glitches and typos! We’ll be making tweaks and additions all the time, I’m sure.

The new schedule of classes for September & October will be released to those of you on the Wait Lists toward the end of July. The remaining class dates not taken by wait listers will be posted to the website the first week of August.

Big Thanks!
We thank you a million times from the bottom of our hearts for your patience, enthusiasm and support. We grew 8 times bigger in a very short time, and have been catching up with ourselves since we moved to the 1st Street location. Thank you for your patience and support through the transition time.

Stitch Lab has big dreams, like opening another location to serve the north side of town, having open “Stitch & Bitch” nights, hosting more charity sewing events, and having more classroom space, as well as retail space, for hard to find trimmings, fabrics and notions. Know that our first priority ALWAYS is to give you the best experience here possible whether you’re taking a class, just popping into the studio to shop or needing to pick our big beautiful brains. YOU are what makes the Stitch Lab special. And we are SEW grateful!

We have two great, new Stitch Lab gals here to help you in the shop—Niku Arbabi and Sarah Hopkins. Niku has a great deal of knowledge and experience with embroidery and mixed media artwork. Sarah has a strong background in sewing anything from stage costumes to vintage re-vamps. They are super sweet and helpful. Welcome Niku and Sarah!

Big Honkin' News!
DMC tower of embroidery floss power is HERE!!!! We all nearly died of double rainbow stitchy goodness when our DMC embroidery floss was delivered. The display carousel came with a million tiny boxes of gorgeous colored skeins, which took us days to fill in on the display. Once the carousel was completely full we all just stood in awe of it’s gloriousness and now regard it as our dazzling year-round Christmas tree!

Check out these cool embroidery website and blog links from our new Resources page:

CRAFT Magazine Embroidery Archives
Sublime Stitching
Hand Embroidery Network
Hand Embroidery Flickr Group
Hoop Love Flickr Group - Downloadable Vintage Embroidery

Patterns
Our Sublime Stitching patterns are fully stocked right now, too—so if that won't getcha itchin' to start stitchin’ I don't know what will.
Can’t wait to see what you create with this yummy goodness! Please keep those pictures coming!

xoxo,

Leslie & the Stitch Lab Gang