The obligatory 2022 beginning-of-year post

As past years have indicated, I am pretty incapable of following through well on plans. So I’m not going to plan out the year, just next month.

One of my continuing goals has been to have more “passive income streams” – the dragon factory does not pay enough per hour to justify being a full-time job, so I need to also be selling patterns/designs. This doesn’t mean I’m going to start charging for the fun little free embroidery designs, or pull the free sewing patterns, it just means I’m going to buckle down and make proper instructions for more complicated ones.

Here’s what I mean: in January, I have a release planned every Friday. The first Friday will be a Spoonflower cut-and-sew French Bulldog, of which I somehow have no pictures from when I designed it, but here’s an embroidery version of one of the early prototypes. The cut-and-sew version is the smiling muzzle, which I don’t even have a picture of in embroidery style, and all-white. It’s the same body as the cut-and-sew pug, with a Frenchie tail instead of the pug’s cinnamon bun.

The second Friday will be an in-the-hoop passport cover freebie, along the same lines as the Mini Composition Book Cover. It’s stretching the limits of the Janome’s 20cm hoop, so it’s going to be limited to 6×10 Brothers and the like. Sadly, it’s a smidge too tall to pull off in the 5×12 repositionable hoop, just as the mini-comp is too tall to pull off in the 4×6.75 one that article also talks about. And yes, you can 100% just use Ink/Stitch to resize the SVG for the mini comp cover yourself to fit Moleskine Cahiers, Field Notes, passports, whatever. This is just me doing any trial-and-error for you.

The third Friday will be (and this is the big stretch) putting the beanie-style dragon design up for sale. There will be versions for the 4×4, 5×7, and 20cm machines, applique and embroidery eyes, and headknobs and full horns. I don’t think at this point I’ll include the old-style short-necked version (as seen in the two smaller sizes here), but if there’s demand I might.

And the fourth Friday will be a freebie, a simple in-the-hoop or conventionally-sewn sea otter. It’s an old design I ran across while organizing the design files, and somehow failed to finish the instructions for and publish.

So that’s a vinyl freebie, a plushie freebie, a Spoonflower fabric, and a pay-for digital design (plus any little ITH freebies I think of throughout the month). That’s the plan! Let’s see how it works out…