Southern Gal's Crochet beginnings...

 

So if you missed the first part... Leading up to Southern Gal's Crochet.

Welcome to the beginning of Southern Gal's Crochet.

I left off with falling in love with making Amigurumi. This lead to exploring as many patterns as I could get my hands on and quickly realizing patterns are written in various different ways, each designer had their own style just like crocheters. I was learning heaps and had boxes filled with finished products. 

With all these finished products hanging around I needed to do something with them. So I opened a Etsy shop. The first thing they ask for is a shop name, I had no clue what name to be. That was torture for me, my family and friends, eventually it was decided Southern Gal's Crochet was good. 

Selling my finished items and making custom orders went well but I knew it wasn't where my heart was at, I knew I wanted to write patterns for all the ideas I had floating in my head. 

I wrote my first pattern in 2011, I was thrilled with myself. LOL! I laugh cause I was so naive. I had no clue about the legal stuff, protecting your work and making a quality pattern. Heck I didn't even know that you were supposed to get those patterns tested before publishing. 

Yes. Yes I did! I really released a pattern untested and with zero step photos. I hang my head in shame. I soon realized I had made a mistake when I started getting mean messages from customers unhappy with the quality of pattern they purchased. I look back and I don't blame them at all, today I would totally do the same thing, maybe not as mean.

I worked hard at making my patterns better and with a little more style. Slowly building it up one pattern at a time, in just a few years I had a about a dozen patterns. It probably would've been more but I was still taking orders from family and friends. 

One day in 2018 I decided that was it, no more orders, I was going to switch over to just patterns. 

I am glad I did. It freed my creative mind to flow, the pattern ideas were coming at me faster than I could make them. My testers were so busy I had 2 or 3 patterns being tested at once, it was crazy!

Thankfully I got control of my mania and settled into a nice groove. I still get lots of ideas and jot them down but I am not frantically trying to do them all at once anymore. At this slower pace, even if I wasn't to get another idea, I would still have enough to last a few more years. Haha.

I hoped you enjoyed getting to know me a little better and of how it all began is still going.

Happy Crocheting!
Heather Welch