My own @CutSewGrow Story: How I Cut, Sewed & Grew my own Sewn Product Business
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Hello my friends! Welcome back to another episode of the Cut, Sew, Grow Podcast! It's so nice to have you here.
I thought it might be helpful for you to hear a little bit more about My Cut, Sew, Grow Story, so you know who you're learning from.
Who I am
As you may know, I am Shannon Sorensen, the Founder and CEO of a specialty washcloths brand, Fairface Washcloths. I have been making and selling our soft flannel washcloths for over 12-1/2 years and it has come a long way since the beginning.
Today I'm going to share with you the winding road that has brought me to where I am today with my sewn product business, and hopefully give you some insight into your own journey making and selling your own sewn products.
The Start to my Sewing Career
Contrary to popular belief, I didn't start out making washcloths.
I had used a sewing machine a little bit way back in middle school, when I had HomeEc and we learned how to sew aprons. Mine was made with cute white cotton fabric with little red strawberries on it, and I surprisingly, I did a pretty good job if I do say so myself.
I used to like to hop onto my mom's sewing machine and try sewing random projects, while I was growing up, but I got my first sewing machine as a gift from my husband back in 2009. I had told him that I really wanted one, and he did some research and surprised me with one for Christmas, so I was really excited.
My First Sewing Projects
My first sewing projects on my new machine were pretty much refashioning clothes. Do you remember the refashioning craze? Maybe it's still going on, I don't know.
Basically it was about taking oversized clothes or other things made of fabric and turning them into something you could wear or something else entirely.
Like I turned a men's shirt into a cute ruffled skirt. I would buy clearance t-shirts at Old Navy and cut them up to sew ruffles on them, I turned a clearance Anthropology tablecloth with this really cute bright fabric, into a cute apron and place mats. Anyway, I was obsessed with doing that for a long time.
The Birth of my Sewing Blog
It was at that same time that I started a creative and sewing blog, ShannonSews.blogspot.com, it's actually still there, and I'm trying to revive it. I need to go back and do a lot of editing, but hopefully I'll be able to start sharing some new projects on there to make it more current.
On this blog, I would share all my creative sewing projects and link them to craft parties.
Do you remember online crafting or sewing parties? I don't know if anyone still does that, it was kind of the early years of blogging at that point, but basically someone would host a sewing or creative party and you could link your projects from your blog to their website gallery so everyone could look at each other's projects.
It was a lot of fun, and if you were lucky, you might be spotlighted and have your projects featured on one of their blog posts, which was a big deal to me. I was lucky enough to have that happen several times, which was really cool.
I got to know the sewing and crafting community through those online sharing parties and it was full of such creative people, and honestly, still is.
I also started sewing cute baby bibs and burp cloth sets for friends and family and diving into sewing decorative pillow covers...like shabby ruffled pillows. Do you remember that craze? I did that, along with dreaming up some fun and unique designs of my own.
Sewing and Selling my Sewn Products
My First Etsy Shop
Sewing these pillow covers and baby accessories is what prompted me to start selling my own sewn products on Etsy and I opened my first Etsy shop, Shannon Sorensen Designs.
Back in those days, I was working with kids at a school part of the time, and sewing and creating and blogging and making YouTube videos of what I was doing, in my non-working time.
Turning my sewing hobby into a business, had a big learning curve, there was a lot I had to figure out, about setting up a business, creating a logo, how taxes worked, how to run an online shop, all the things.
I learned so many things along the way.
It was kind of one of those things that you had to keep moving forward and learn as you go, as opposed to reading a bunch of information and not acting until you know everything. Otherwise, it would have taken me a million years to start.
So I started making decorative pillow covers, ruffled aprons, cute baby bibs and burp cloths sets, and soft baby blankets, and selling them in my Etsy shop. It was as thrill every time I got an order!
Selling my Sewn Products on Consignment
At the same time I was selling on Etsy, I was also selling at a local store, on a consignment basis, so I got to set up a little display with my cute pillows tucked in vintage dresser drawers, handmade aprons with ruffles and polka dot bows hanging in a different section and my baby bibs and burp cloth sets were set up in baskets in another section.
Small Sewn Batches, Big Time
Making each of these items, cutting and sewing them one by one, took a lot of time, but at the time, it was so fun to see my designs come to life and such a thrill to think that someone saw what I made and loved it enough to buy it and take it home. That was just the coolest feeling.
Early on, I was so caught up in making these beautiful detailed products, that my sale prices really didn't reflect the time and materials it took me to make them.
It took hours and hours to sew and hem all those hand pleated ruffles, adding each embellishment piece by piece.
Two of my "Shag" designed pillow cases, as I called them, were made entirely of rectangle pieces of soft fleece that I cut and sewed individually piece by piece to the front of each fleece pillow case. Time consuming? Yes. One was a completely covered by those pieces and the other was in a heart design.
Both pillow cases were super cool, but the price tag didn't reflect the hours and hours of labor, plus material and supplies.
I think at that time I was so focused on creating versus selling, I didn't value my time or materials (some of that I was still paying retail prices for) as I should have.
You live and learn.
How did I get into Making Washcloths?
The Story of Fairface Washcloths
The story of how Fairface Washcloths came to be, really has to do with my personal story with infertility and rosacea. There are several episodes on The Fairface Podcast, where I talk a lot about that, so you can go listen to those if you want to.
Invitro & Rosacea
But the short version, is that I have always had sensitive skin, but it wasn't until the end of my husband and I going through invitro, that I developed full blown rosacea.
My hormones were all over the place from the treatments and pregnancy (which sadly ended up being ectopic), and my skin was going crazy. It was red and itchy and irritated and basically out of control, which lead me to a dermatologist, who diagnosed me with rosacea.
From that point on, the skin care routine I had always followed, was just way too abrasive and irritating to my now even more sensitive skin.
I tried washing my face with just my hands, but it didn't always get all my make-up and sunscreen off and when I tried baby washcloths they were still too abrasive.
Necessity is the Mother of Invention
So that's when I started researching and trying different fabrics that would be much more gentle to my sensitive skin, the way I needed a face cloth to be. And the first Fairface Washcloths were born, basically out of necessity.
I often say they are the washcloths that saved my skin, because they really did. After testing out different fabrics, the plush, soft flannel I landed with is calming to my sensitive skin and gentle enough to use on my sensitive face without causing redness or irritation.
Protecting our skin barrier is so important anyway, especially for those of us prone to irritation and sensitivity.
Because these washcloths had worked so well for me, I knew deep down that sharing these with other people with rosacea and sensitive skin, was very important work that I needed to do.
Sewing and Selling Fairface Washcloths
So I went through the process of deciding on a product name (there is an episode of the Fairface Podcast where I talk all about that - it's called, The Story Behind our Name: Fairface Washcloths, Episode 12) which I'll link in the show notes.
I started making these soft flannel washcloths one by one, and adding them to my Etsy shop, along with my pillow covers and baby accessories.
And before long, the washcloth orders way exceeded the other things I was making and selling. I eventually decided to just sell out of the other products I'd been making and decided to focus solely on my washcloths brand.
I shifted the washcloths to their own independent Etsy shop, Fairface Washcloths (where they still are today) and started our own website, FairfaceWashcloths.com.
Going from Small Batch Production to Large Batch Production
So back in the earlier days, I was still cutting my flannel with a hand held rotary cutter, and I could maybe cut, I don't know, 3-4 layers thick at a time, and the Dual-sided washcloths I was also making, that had a flannel front and a terrycloth back, because of the bulk, I was cutting terrycloth out one layer at a time.
The labor was time consuming and I was also sewing and shipping every order myself, before and after my job at the school.
So again, two words: Labor intensive.
Fast forward several years beyond that into the future, and I finally:
- Created my own large scale cutting system that I could do from home, (I could set it up and also take it down and store it)
- Hired extra sewers
- Created systems to mange my materials and inventory...
- cut more,
- sew more, and
- sell more.
And that is why I decided to share everything I have learned over the last 12-1/2 years with you, in our Cut, Sew, Grow Courses.
If you are like I was, cutting and sewing everything on a small, labor intensive scale, and want to learn how to:
- Cut large quantities in bulk, from your home or studio space,
- To hire someone to help you sew so you can produce more,
- and to have proven systems in place to streamline and manage all of that,
then you will really benefit from our Cut, Sew, Grow courses because I get very detailed on how I did it, and how you can do it too.
Game Changing Shift
These things I implemented were a game changer for me. Instead of just cutting small batches of washcloths at a time and sewing as many in a row as I could, I was cutting hundreds of washcloths at a time and along with my sewing help, we could turn out thousands of sewn washcloths in one production run. It was night and day from the small scale production I had been doing. It literally changed everything.
Cutting Fabric in Bulk
So if you are making things that can more easily be produced in larger quantities, things like cloth napkins, pillow covers, pillow cases, placemats, hair scrunchies, headbands, baby blankets, the scope is endless, I can show you how to do the same things I did with mine, to get your own large scale cutting system set up at home and teach you how to hire more sewers to help you and show you how to organize and manage all of that so your materials and products are always accounted for.
The growth I experienced was incredible once I implemented all those things and I'm really excited to share it with you!
Well, that's all I have for you today. I hope this episode has been helpful to see how I started and where I ended up and kind of everything in between,
AND that if you have dreams of selling your own sewn products, that you can see that it really is possible and I would love to be able to help you do that!
Remember to
FOLLOW US on Instagram @CutSewGrow -and please come and say hi! I really want to learn more about you and what products you love making.
+ To keep up with our Cut, Sew, Grow course launch, to help you cut, sew and sell your own sewn products successfully- SIGN-UP on our no obligation waiting list FairfaceWashcloths.com/courses
And be sure to
SUBSCRIBE to this podcast so you never miss one of our weekly episodes!
SHOW NOTES will be available to read for this (and all) episodes as well, on FairfaceWashcloths.blogspot.com.
If you're interested in trying our soft washcloths for your sensitive skin,
visit our Fairface Washcloths Etsy shop or
Thanks so much for being here! I'll see you next week!
xo Shannon
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