A Small Return
I've been thinking about returning to blogging. Its been about 5 years
since the slow decline of 8BitHealey and so much has changed. I feel a
lot of shame about not having the motivation to craft. Its not that I'm
that radically different as a person, but the factors in my life have
changed. This directly altered access and time to maintain old routines.
This entry is mostly to catch you up to speed on my life and help you make a decision on if you want to stick with following me on this page. Maybe I'm not enough of what I used to be and we part ways.
So 5 years ago, I moved to Seattle and the cost of living and access to space radically altered how I could maintain the business model I had before. Selling quilts was a joy and also very hard. As a boss to myself, I was pretty tough - working up to 70 hour weeks to hit deadlines and only charging $10/hour for my labor. I could undersell my time because I was living at home with family and had minimal bills to pay. Once I moved to a city and was supporting myself fully, well, its pretty self explanatory that I needed to raise the price of quilts to break even. The reality was, once I raised the price, business demand decreased. This made total sense to me. I was selling to video game enthusiasts and parents who wanted to get their kids unique bedding. I didn't want to sell more expensive blankets, and raising the price while the quality remained the same as before didn't feel great. I also had found decreasing enjoyment selling the same blanket design over and over from an artist's point of view.
So when the blanket demand decreased, I got a regular 40 hour a week job in textile production. Sewing for a living was my focus, and it didn't really matter doing what as long as I was paying the bills. So I learned to knit tubes of fabric on industrial jacquard knitting machines and sew them into custom beanies. Later I became the needleworks manager for the company and was responsible for teams who decorated/altered clothing via sewing, knitting and embroidering. It was great. It was hard. It left no time for quilting. I don't regret the change in profession but I did know I had no extra energy for personal projects.
I thought I'd stay in that role the rest of my career, but the company eventually moved production to Utah and it was a stressful job that did negatively effect my personal relationships. Traveling weekly to Utah from Washington state is hard to sustain and I left for a completely knew endeavor, learning to produce direct to garment printing. It was fun, but a far shot from the old needleworks job. Anyway, in February, my new job decided to move garment printing to an off site location and I've been learning more tame office work to fill my 40 hours. This has sparked the smallest flame to get back into crafts. I've had a year to reign in the stress of production life and want to re-evaluate personal crafts lurking untouched for 5 years. Is 8bitHealey returning? Absolutely not, but me as a person, yeah, I'm want to chase my passions and find out who I am now.
This entry is mostly to catch you up to speed on my life and help you make a decision on if you want to stick with following me on this page. Maybe I'm not enough of what I used to be and we part ways.
So 5 years ago, I moved to Seattle and the cost of living and access to space radically altered how I could maintain the business model I had before. Selling quilts was a joy and also very hard. As a boss to myself, I was pretty tough - working up to 70 hour weeks to hit deadlines and only charging $10/hour for my labor. I could undersell my time because I was living at home with family and had minimal bills to pay. Once I moved to a city and was supporting myself fully, well, its pretty self explanatory that I needed to raise the price of quilts to break even. The reality was, once I raised the price, business demand decreased. This made total sense to me. I was selling to video game enthusiasts and parents who wanted to get their kids unique bedding. I didn't want to sell more expensive blankets, and raising the price while the quality remained the same as before didn't feel great. I also had found decreasing enjoyment selling the same blanket design over and over from an artist's point of view.
So when the blanket demand decreased, I got a regular 40 hour a week job in textile production. Sewing for a living was my focus, and it didn't really matter doing what as long as I was paying the bills. So I learned to knit tubes of fabric on industrial jacquard knitting machines and sew them into custom beanies. Later I became the needleworks manager for the company and was responsible for teams who decorated/altered clothing via sewing, knitting and embroidering. It was great. It was hard. It left no time for quilting. I don't regret the change in profession but I did know I had no extra energy for personal projects.
I thought I'd stay in that role the rest of my career, but the company eventually moved production to Utah and it was a stressful job that did negatively effect my personal relationships. Traveling weekly to Utah from Washington state is hard to sustain and I left for a completely knew endeavor, learning to produce direct to garment printing. It was fun, but a far shot from the old needleworks job. Anyway, in February, my new job decided to move garment printing to an off site location and I've been learning more tame office work to fill my 40 hours. This has sparked the smallest flame to get back into crafts. I've had a year to reign in the stress of production life and want to re-evaluate personal crafts lurking untouched for 5 years. Is 8bitHealey returning? Absolutely not, but me as a person, yeah, I'm want to chase my passions and find out who I am now.
So what does that mean for this space? Next week, I'll be changing the
name to 8bitHealey's Life full of Mayhem. Kind of a nod to how much has
changed. I plan on moving away from a profit driven business model and
instead focus on daily interests. Maybe the blog will be too far off
target from quilting and not for you, but I'm here to honestly set
expectations.
What I want to blog about:
- Recipe reviews: focusing on whats in season and I'm actively cooking. I learned in the past year I have PCOS, a hormonal imbalance that effects my health, and I've had to make a lot of changes to my lifestyle.
- Crafting blogs about projects I'm working on. Maybe its recommending other tutorials, or sharing ideas, but it'll be more diverse then the old 8 bit focus and quilting.
- I do want to blog about quilts, but I will not be opening the old store up and I will not be producing quilts like I did in the past. I want to focus on writing tutorials on how to make my quilts with written instructions, complementary work along videos and community support. The directions would be pay what you want, including the option of free. I don't want to be profit motivated in anything I do. I think that kills my enjoyment. I do want to sell the one off finished products maybe through ebay or a personal website, but I will not be taking commissions or orders. If you love something, I want to support you making it yourself.
- I want a space to write about my personal musings, what I'm learning/reading. I struggle with imposter syndrome and I do not think I'm an expert in anything, but I also want to share. So without claiming be be a tiny house, travel guru, mommy blogger, dietitian life coach - I sure would like a small place to talk. If slice of life, live journal throw back blogging isn't your thing - maybe we should part ways.
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