As you might have noticed, we rolled out a whole pile of new functionality the week before last! I'll walk you through it all so you have an idea of what we've added, which falls into six categories:
- New Quilt fields
- New Embroidery fields
- New Garment section for body shape/alterations on projects
- Thread collections (and overhaul of threads)
- Quilting fabric precuts
- Refined form design
Before telling you about all of that, we need to say a huge thank you to everyone who helped hash out the details of what was needed in the forums, and for your patience as we embarked on this a few months back and crammed way too much in so it took longer than expected! Note to self: smaller chunks next time! :)
New Quilt fields
There are a bunch of new fields including a new section just for quilts on projects and patterns, where you'll be able to enter things like:
- Whether a pattern is designed for a specific type of precut
- Whether a pattern is designed to be used with a specific fabric collection
- Who quilted your quilt (so for e.g. you can credit the longarm quilter right on the project)
- The style of quilting used
- The kind of block or quilt pattern
- The piecing style used
- The type of precut used
- The exact precut bundle/collection (so you don't have to enter each fabric separately)
This will allow us to document more specific details about quilt patterns and projects, and then use those as search filters when browsing the database!
New Embroidery fields
There are also a ton of new fields for embroidery projects and patterns that let you document:
- A fabric's thread count
- Whether a fabric is ideal for use as embroidery base cloth
- The thread collection used on a project
- Finished dimensions
- Stitch types used (in a pattern or project)
- Recommended threads for a pattern + quantity of each
- Design elements field on patterns (so now you can add/find patterns with a theme like animals, Christmas, leaves, etc.)
- Pattern collection (for patterns that are part of a set, can also be used for garment patterns that are released by season or as sets)
And like with the quilt fields, these will show up as search filters on all the projects and patterns in the database once people have entered info in them!
New Garment section on projects
You asked us to make it possible to document your body shape and modifications, so that as the project database grows, you can filter by projects made by/for people with similar shapes as you. It sounded like a great idea, so we've added a whole pile of garment/body shape fields to projects! The fields and categories are something we hashed out in the forums, and while classifying the body shapes of real humans is never going to be 100% perfect, we aimed to make it flexible and as unladen with problematic terms as possible. And of course, filling these in is completely optional, if you're not comfortable just leave them blank.
You can now track:
- Height
- Body shape
- Bust adjustments
- Length adjustments
- And a variety of other adjustment such as sway back, broad shoulders, etc.
If you're wondering why we didn't put these fields on the member profiles themselves, it's for two reasons: 1) our bodies change over time so then the projects could become out of sync with the body shape categories entered, and 2) sometimes we sew for other people, so we want to be able to enter their info and not our own! We hope this will help you find helpful projects made by other members in the future.
Thread collections (and overhaul of threads)
Threads were probably the one big area that wasn't quite right when we launched, and it's finally had a long awaited overhaul. We've added "thread collections", which works much like fabric collections, grouping together threads more easily and saving us having to re-enter the same info over and over on each thread. Aside from adding thread collections, a bunch of other things related to threads have been added or changed:
- New fields added to threads/thread collections such as number of plies, recommended uses, and lengths available (such as spools, skeins, etc. and the yardages you can buy).
- Thread and thread collection fields have been added to in various places on the site so you can get more specific about all things thready on patterns, projects, etc.
- Threads are now stashable!
- The individual thread pages have been simplified by moving a lot of info to the thread collection, making individual threads easier to add and collections easier to maintain/update.
- We improved the reference field when you are adding threads on projects or patterns so they're easier to find.
The existing thread type field is the one thing that could use cleaning up, it's a bit of a mish-mash, taking suggestions from the thread savvy there!
Quilting fabric precuts
On each fabric collection, you'll see a new "Precuts" tab which takes you to a page where you can add pre-cuts to the collection! Here are some things you can do related to precuts:
- Once added, you can stash them to keep track of what you own.
- You can enter that you used a precut bundle on your project so you don't have to add each fabric individually, and when you do that the project will show up on the collection's projects tab.
- There's also a new "precut type" field on patterns and projects as well, so even if you didn't use a bundle from a specific collection, you can indicate the type of precut bundle used. This will allow projects in the database to be filtered by precut type so you could for example search for all projects made with charm packs.
Refined form design
Last but not least, we refined the design of the forms, to make them less boxy and clunky looking, and also added the handy +/- collapse boxes on patterns and projects for details about quilts, embroidery, and garments (projects only). Sometimes it's the little things that make a place feel a bit brighter and easier to use!
Hope you all like the new stuff! Thanks again to everyone who helped out with planning these new features!