news

Hi everyone,

Whew! It's been a chaotic and stressful year to say the least. I've written and rewritten this post and postponed publishing it for months at this point... There was just too much to catch up on, even before the spring and summer brought so much global upheaval. With any luck this will be the final "big update" post like this, and the rest will be announcements about how we're out of beta and building cool new stuff!

In any case, perfect is the enemy of good (and more importantly, of done), so here we go. A mammoth update on where things are at and what's coming up for Textillia:

(Re)introductions + how things work around here

It's been a long time since we've done a proper update, so let's start with a (re)intro for anyone who's new around here.

Hey folks!

I debated whether this warranted an official blog post, but decided it was the best way to reach those who don't follow us on Instagram. I wanted to let you know that I'm going to be taking a little break from posting on Textillia's social media, and further scaling back my presence here - just temporarily, barring any unforeseen events.

It's for a good reason, as *drum roll* I finally got a diagnosis for the mysterious progressive illness that I’ve been so debilitated by the past several years! I’ll spare you the details here, but the condition is autoimmune so it should be treatable. Not curable, as it is a chronic condition after all, but if I respond half decently to the treatment, I should be able to function quite a bit better. Some people respond quickly, others take from several months to a year, so it’s still going to be a long road, but I finally have a diagnosis and treatment plan, and real hope to get at least somewhat better (or at least stop getting worse)!

We're excited to announce that you can now choose to make your projects and profile publicly visible, making them much easier to share! *cue cheering*

Project visibility options

You might have noticed that there's a new little box at the top of each project page, indicating its visibility status:

At the bottom of the project form (when you edit or add a project) the last field you'll see now is "Who can view this project?" You can choose from:

• Only me
• Textillia members
• Everyone (public)

"Only me" can be useful if you're working on a gift or a swap project that you don't want the recipient to see until they've received it, or really any other projects that you just want to keep private. Just don't forget to set it to "Textillia members" or "Everyone" once you mark it as finished, otherwise nobody else will get to see it!

"Textillia members" is the default we've been using up until now, which means that everyone who's a member can see it once they're logged in.

"Everyone (public)" means that someone who doesn't even have a Textillia account can see it when given the link to the page - so for example, if you share a project you've finished to Facebook, your friends can all see it without needing to log in! When you choose this, it also enables the "Share" links on the page for Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter (they appear below the grey sidebar box on desktop, or at the very bottom of the screen on mobile).

Hey folks! Thought I'd post a little update here for the keeners who want to keep up with what's going on behind the scenes. We have some small announcements about the second half of summer and what we'll be up to, particularly between now and the (so far mythical) milestone of getting out of beta.

To refresh your memory, we were planning for our next steps to be the Big Software Upgrade and completing the subscription system, then starting the full launch 1 month countdown clock. Well...change of plan: it turns out that while Drupal 8 (the software version we'll be upgrading to) is all ready to go for new site builds, it's not completely ready for upgrades. While this is a bummer in some ways, as it'll delay us making a lot of the user interface and search improvements we really need, the silver lining is instead of spending a bunch of time on the upgrade this summer, Bruno's going to work on some other top priority improvements! Oh yeah, did I mention that? No I didn't, cause we were kind of holding out on you just in case something came up! ;)

Exciting news: Bruno just completed a big freelance contract last week, and now (aside from little bits for his one ongoing client) he's blocked out the rest of the summer to work on Textillia! Hurrah! We weren't sure this would be possible initially, but we talked it over and decided it was necessary to get over the hump of getting out of beta. I'll take this as an opportunity to remind everyone that donations are very welcome, we can use all the help we can get while he's taking more time off paid work!

Hi everyone!

We've been doing some major reviewing and planning, and we're ready to tell you all about what's next for Textillia, including all the details about memberships. Spoiler alert: they'll be only $20USD/year! 

We've come so far...

While we started working on it over a year before launching, Textillia has been live since November 2015. That's already almost a year and a half, and in that time we've gathered a lovely small community of sewists and stitchers, and added a ton of content and new functionality to the site. As of yesterday, Textillia contains...

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:

1. New Quilt fields
2. New Embroidery fields
3. New Garment section for body shape/alterations on projects
4. Thread collections (and overhaul of threads)
5. Quilting fabric precuts
6. 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! :)

Since everyone who responded on Instagram was keen for us to go ahead with the print on demand shirts, we're going for it! Here are some photos of the shirt samples we got, and info below that about the shirts and how to order. Every shirt ordered helps fund development of Textillia.com and also makes you the coolest quilter or sewist around. :)

Use the code FREESHIPc40446 through November 21st for free shipping on all orders over $45 US / $80 International! (Code is valid from now until 11/21/16 extended to Nov. 24 at 11:59pm CST.)

Get your shirts!

Here are some photos of my favourite styles - lots more colors and styles are available over in the shop...