On Writing a Sewing Book


This is me (well, my toes anyway) a few days ago trying to figure out the patterns for our newest book - currently titled Sewing Machine School.  It's a little more grown-up this time, but still has the same spirit and good information like Sewing School.   The manuscript went into the mail to Storey Publishing today.  Yes, today!  So, you can imagine our relief and excitement.  It really is amazing to think that we'll hopefully inspire a bunch of cute kids out there to go and machine sew!  Don't rush to the store yet, though. It'll take about a year for the book to come out.  In the meantime, we'll have tons of re-writes and re-shoots and go back and forth.
A lot of people have asked how Andria & I got hooked up with Storey Publishing.  Really, we just got lucky.  I feel that our proposal was strong and landed on our editor Deborah Balmuth's desk at exactly the right time. 

Recently, I've noticed a few blog posts about writing a craft book. I love the process described by Ellen at The Long Thread.  She really takes you through the ideas of a book to the final product.  The amazing Kathreen Ricketson at Whipup also did a 3-part series about getting a craft book published - great stuff with lots of resources. 

So now you know why my posts have been sporadic and not much kid-sewing these past few weeks.  But have no fear, we have lots to share with you soon.  Some new projects and great ideas for kids who like to sew!

3 comments:

Cindy said...

Machine Sewing School, Yay! My kids love their copies of Sewing School (yes, they each have one to go with their sewing boxes) and the books get quite the workout making the various projects but they really want to sew like Grandma (and mom). We're going to do some of the projects on the machine this summer while we wait for your new book.

Amie Plumley said...

Thanks, Cindy! It's so good to hear that your kids are loving Sewing School. Most of the projects in that book can be easily adapted to machine sewing.

Kids are fascinated by the sewing machine, aren't they?!

Shannah said...

How exciting! I'm looking forward to this next one!