Or really, about Silver Seams.

I started sewing in the 70's, taking Stretch-n-Sew classes with my mother at a sewing machine store. So much polyester interlock.

I got out the sewing machine off and on over the years, but didn't seriously pick it back up until my kid was a toddler and I was a stay-at-home mom. I sewed jeans quilts and whatnot, and the fabric store folks knew me as N*n's Mom.

Costume days

I saw folks selling faux-fur wolf tails made from Monterey Mills shag on a free auction site and thought "there is a faux fur at Hancock that would make a much more interesting tail." (You've got to remember: this was the early 00's, faux fur availability was mediocre and cosplay had not yet become something you could make a living at). I bought $15 worth of fur, enough to make four tails. I made one tail, put it on the site at $15 starting bid, and went "ha ha I will probably never get paid."

Friends came over the night the auction ended, and I kept popping down into the basement to check the auction status. And it kept going up, and finally closed at, IIRC, $63. "I will definitely never get paid that much," I said, and somehow I did. (I don't even remember how. Maybe a mailed paper check? E-commerce was not big yet!)

I needed a business name and "Silver" had been my nickname for some time (from the "Mercedes silver" color of the Radio Shack Color Computer I learned to code on). Folks tried to brainstorm it: "Silver Needle?" "Silver Thread?" and suggested something with alliteration that led me to go "that's close but... oh, what about 'Silver Seams'?" And here I am.

One thing led to another and I ended up making quite a bit of cosplay/fursuiting stuff. I am delighted by it but I have to admit the closest I've come to wearing a fursuit was volunteering at a PBS children's festival once and almost getting cast as Clifford the Big Red Dog. I ended up shepherding someone in an inflatable Jay Jay the Jet Plane costume instead, and meeting Mr. McFeely The Speedy Delivery Guy backstage. (He's a delightful person, by the way.)

My mother tried to explain the business to her 80-something neighbor once, and that led Fran to deciding I needed to be the recipient of one of her fur coats: a karakul lambskin one.

Artist teddy bear days

That wasn't a thing I could make a fursuit out of, but it did lead me down another rabbit trail: artist teddy bears. These are a whole different genre than even custom plush stuffed animals: they're using traditional teddy bear making techniques and tools. They're made from traditional mohair or alpaca fabric, with an eye to heirloom quality. But sometimes they're made from out-of-style fur coats with sentimental value: high-end memory bears.

That's what I set out to learn how to do, and I did in fact make Fran a karakul bear. And I joined a local bear-making guild, and set out to pivot my business to cater to the wealthy mostly-ladies who collected artist teddy bears. That was in 2006-2007, right before the Great Recession. Suddenly no one was buying bears.

I kept blogging, and occasionally made someone a plush when they lost a pet or needed a fundraiser, and eventually started an Amazon referral account, but barely made enough to cover the domain registration some years.

The day of the sewing robot

Both my mother-in-law and mother had embroidery machines, but somehow I was never interested. We moved out here to New Jersey, 1500 miles from both those machines, and I learned about "in-the-hoop" embroidery. Suddenly, I was interested. I'd been using Spoonflower to print some pre-shaded fabric for tiny pegasuses, and the skinny little horse legs were very precise to sew. Decades of software development means I have mild-to-moderate RSI, and I realized my plans were starting to exceed my ability to carry them out.

A high-precision automated sewing machine? Yes please! And the rest is history.