Hi! Welcome to Silver Seams, a blog and business I started a couple decades ago. It's been through a few reinventions (I have ADHD, I've always got to try new things) but has always been a bit nerdy and offbeat.

The center of gravity of my interests the last few years has been robot sewing: at the same time my fabric sculptures got more detailed, my RSI got worse. I decided to experiment with using an embroidery machine to do the things my brain wanted to create but my hands couldn't keep up with. And it has mostly worked!

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Along the way, I realized nobody else was really doing the three-dimensional designs in the embroidery machine the way I was. Unlike a regular sewing machine, the embroidery machine can't really sew different-shaped pieces together. Everything has to be two flat pieces of fabric, at least in the area the machine is currently working in. You see a lot of "3D" plushies made by layering 2D pieces, and that certainly works for some things (the faces of my Pug and Frenchie, for instance) but it involves more hand-sewing.

So that led to making designs to sell - not just fantasy critters, but whatever seemed suited to the 3D construction method, and now I have a pretty good stable of plushies that don't scream "made with some weird constraints!"

Click here to browse the 3D designs!

But despite the simplicity of the technique (again: everything's flat until you stuff it!) it was intimidating to people. So this led to making charm-style plushies - single-sided, sometimes called "die-cut" - as a way to introduce myself to people. These designs are very versatile - I've written software that will blow up my basic design into plush, feltie, bunting, applique and other versions, scale it for different hoops, and mix-and-match facial expressions or other decorations.

Click here to browse the charm designs!