If you haven’t already guessed by the countdown clock on the home page, or by my increasingly excitable instagram stories, I’m launching haberdashery shop pre-orders – available 28th September at 9am! Why 28th September you ask? Well, if you’ve been following along with The New Crafthouse’s #sewyourselfsustainable instagram challenge, you might know that day 28 is Sustainable Brands, and that was too good an opportunity to launch for me to miss.
I really am super excited about this, I’ve been planning the launch of this business for over a year now and while it’s gone through a few changes, the core desire at the heart of it remains: making it easy and affordable for crafters to access sustainably sourced, made and packaged items for sewing, knitting and crocheting. I’ll be starting with a small range of tools, but aim to expand my product line within the first few months with more tools and even some gift sets. I have lots of ideas on what to stock which I hope you’ll love.
Check out my instagram stories for discount codes and keep an eye out for a launch giveaway over on instagram too! Now, let’s take a look at the products I’m stocking at launch.
Sewing - haberdashery pre-orders
Haberdashery is a rather wide, all encompassing term in sewing. There’s so many product lines I could stock that it was difficult to drill down to what I should start with and what products I should plan to add in future updates.
Starting out, there’s three sewing specific products: a seam ripper, a stiletto awl and a point turner.
The seam ripper and stiletto awl both feature wooden handles made from beautiful steamed beech. Inside these handles is a brass tube and the blades can be removed and stored inside the handle for safe keeping. The point turner is laser cut from oak and finished by hand to give a smooth surfaced tool which is perfect for turning your seams and creating professional looking crisp collars, lapels, handles, and anything else which might ordinarily be difficult to get the seam sitting properly.
I do have plans for future products, though sourcing the materials required for some of these has proven to be quite difficult so far, which is why there aren’t more sewing products in this release.
Knitting and Crochet - haberdashery pre-orders
I decided to add knitting and crochet products to the store after realising that plastic was so pervasive in these crafts that there often aren’t sustainable alternatives to commonly used items. Again, I have lots of ideas for future product lines beyond our haberdashery pre-orders, though with these I need to work out the best method of creating some of them.
To begin with, you’ll find four knitting and crochet specific products: single point knitting needles, standard crochet hooks, a gauge ruler and a set of stitch markers.
I absolutely fell in love with the knitting needles and crochet hooks when I saw the samples – they’re beautifully crafted from deep rosewood and pale steamed beech. To begin with, I’m stocking six different diameters, from 3.5mm to 12mm. I’ve been using the 3.5mm hook recently and I’m loving it – wood just feels so nice to work with!
I’m a big fan of mechanical rulers, which have measurements from the very edge of the ruler all the way down – I even pinched one of my husband’s for my sewing room! So when considering making a swatch gauge, it had to have that same usability behind it; no more finding the first mark and aligning that, you can align straight to the edge of the gauge. I also tend to find that 15cm isn’t long enough but 30cm is too long, so it’s 20cm long and has both metric and imperial measurements.
The gauge is cut and engraved with lasers onto beautiful European oak. In the centre you have holes to help identify what size your needle or hook is, if it doesn’t have it engraved onto it, and the holes have both mm and US size identifiers to help you work out which needles or hooks you need if you’re working to an American pattern.
Lastly, no knitting or crochet shop would be complete without stitch markers. As my logo is a bumblebee, which is the mascot of Manchester, I’ve decided that my stitch markers will help to raise money for the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. I based the design for my logo on the White Tailed Bumblebee, a solitary bee that is common in the North West, and I feel it’s only fair that the bees benefit from being the area’s mascot. Again laser cut from oak, these attach to your WIPs using beautiful copper coloured bulb pins and – as these come in a pack of five – they also come on a kilt pin which you can pin into your project bag to help keep your markers organised and to hand when you need them.
Of course, no online haberdashery shop would be complete without the option to buy a haberdashery digital gift card!
I hope you all really like these products! Some may change very slightly before they ship, as the above images are photos of sample products. I’ve been working hard to get everything ready for this point and so I’d love it if you can help spread the word and support my tiny business – even if you aren’t in a position to purchase at the moment, liking, commenting on and sharing my social media is always helpful, as this gets the social media algorithms to push my business in front of more people.
