Craft Industry Alliance

On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast we're talking about creative conferences with my guests Grace Dobush, an organizer of Midwest Craft Con , and Joy Uyeno, an organizer of The Hello Sessions . Grace is a freelance journalist and the author of the Crafty Superstar business guides. She's also the co-organizer of Crafty Supermarket, an indie show that is celebrating its sixth b...

On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcastI chat with Malka Dubrawsky. Malka is a fabric designer and quilter who is best known for her hand dyed and pattern fabrics. She has a degree in studio art from the University of Texas in Austin and trained to be a printmaker, but finding herself home with young children and without a press she began to work in fiber art. After several years...

On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast we're talking about teaching quilting online with my guest, Rob Appell. Rob is the host of Man Sewing , a YouTube channel of the Missouri Star Quilt Company. He is a quilter and national quilting instructor who travels and teaches at many premier quilting shows and retreats. We talk about overcoming life obstacles in order to focus on pursu...

On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast my guests are Heather Jassy, Senior Vice President of Members and Community at Etsy, and Stephanie Schacht, the Head of Responsible Seller Growth at Etsy. There's an ongoing tension as an Etsy seller between the individual and the marketplace. What do we give up and what do we gain by being part of Etsy? Over the last few years a significan...

On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast we're talking about making art and craft with my guest, Geninne Zlatkis. Geninne is an artist living in Santa Fe, New Mexico with her husband Manolo, their two sons and a rescue puppy named Zorro. She was born in New York, but shortly after her parents began traveling around South America, where she lived in seven different countries and we...

On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast we're talking about running an online fabric shop with my guest, Lindsay Prezzano. Lindsay and her husband, Charlie, are the founders and co-owners of Hawthorne Threads. Hawthorne Threads is an online fabric shop offering a vast selection of curated contemporary fabric collections, patterns, and thread for the modern sewer. Lindsay and Char...

On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast we're talking about crafting in community with my guests Kaari and Molly Meng. Kaari Meng is the founder and owner of French General, a shop and workshop space in Los Angeles that she's had for 18 years. Kaari and her husband, JZ, have written, photographed, and styled six books over the past ten years including French Inspired Home, Treasu...

On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast we are talking about improvisational quilting with my guest, Sherri Lynn Wood . Sherri is an artist working in Oakland, California. She has been making and improvising quilts as a creative life practice for 25 years and is the author of the new book published by Abrams/ STC Craft, The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters - A Guide to Creatin...

On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast we’re talking about running an independent publishing company with my guest, Amy Barickman. Founder and owner of Indygo Junction , Amy Barickman is a creative leader in the fabric arts industry. In 1990, Amy founded Indygo Junction, a sewing pattern and book publishing company which has published over twelve hundred pattern titles and 80 bo...

On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast we're talking with Christine Haynes who is a Los Angeles-based sewing author, teacher, and pattern designer with her own line of self-published vintage-inspired sewing patterns. She has written four books, How to Speak Fluent Sewing, Skirts & Dresses for First Time Sewers, The Complete Photo Guide to Clothing Construction, and Chic & Simple...

On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast we're talking about stitching and doll making with my guests, Salley Mavor and Mimi Kirchner. Salley Mavor uses sculptural needlework to illustrate stories. Her 3-dimensional works of art incorporate highly detailed stitching and found objects. She embroiders, wraps, embellishes, and paints to create tableaus in bas-relief. Mimi Kirchner is...

Today's episode is sponsored by Creativebug . Use the code NAPS at checkout and get a free 1-month subscription. On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast we're talking about ceramics with my guest, Diana Fayt. Diana is a modern day scrimshander whose chosen medium is clay rather than whalebone. Drawing on her background as a painter, sculptor, printmaker, and clayer, Diana's clay...

On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast I'm visiting Durham, North Carolina and I stopped in at the headquarters of Spoonflower, the world's largest marketplace of independent surface designs, to talk with co-founder Stephen Fraser. Stephen traces the history of Spoonflower from it's early days with just two employees in an old sock factory building to today with over 100 employe...

On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast I'm talking with Deborah Balmuth, the publisher at Storey. We recorded this podcast at Craftcation 2015 in Ventura, California. In this conversation we talk about what makes a great how-to book and how Storey selects authors, including what Deborah is looking for in a book proposal. We also talk about how craft publishing can create somethi...

On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast we're talking about embroidery as an art form with my guest, Rebecca Ringquist. Rebecca is a Brooklyn-based visual artist and designer. Approaching the technique of embroidery as a way of drawing, Rebecca has taught hundreds of people new ways of making marks on fabric with thread. Her popular Dropcloth samplers have designs pre-printed on...

On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast we're talking about how an indie designer can create a worldwide wholesale textile business while keeping production small scale and local with my guest, Heather Moore of Skinny LaMinx. When Heather started experimenting with screenprinting in her spare time in 2007 she had no idea that just a few years later she'd have a shop in Cape Town,...

On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast we're talking about organic fabric today with my guests Michelle Engel Bencsko, the co-founder and creative director of Cloud9 Fabrics, and Gina Pantastico, the co-founder and director of operations of Cloud9. Michelle and Gina each bring over a decade of experience in the fabric manufacturing business to Cloud9 where their vision of produc...

On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast we're talking about art retreats with my guest, Elizabeth Duvivier. Elizabeth is the founder and director of Squam Art Workshops. Elizabeth founded Squam in 2008 as a way to bring a similar experience to the one she had at Artfest to the East Coast. Attendees of Squam Art Workshop describe it as a magical experience in which they can let go...

On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast we're talking about what it takes to run a successful brick-and-mortar crafts shop with my guests Jaime Jennings and Amber Corcoran of Fancy Tiger Crafts in Denver, Colorado, and Virginia Johnson of Gather Here in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Please note that this show used to be called the While She Naps podcast. The name has changed, but the...

On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast we're talking about building a handmade doll business with Christina Platt, the owner of Bamboletta Dolls. Christina is a wife and mother of two little boys. Her company makes one-of-a-kind handcrafted dolls using all natural materials. With a team of 48 women and her husband, who makes the heads, they create over 80 dolls per week that fin...

On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast I talk with Kelly Wilkinson, Editorial Director at Creativbug, and Liana Allday, Senior Editor at Creativebug, about online learning. Hear the story of how this innovative online learning platform got it's start and learn about what the Creativebug team looks for in a new class or teacher. Is video the new frontier in craft publishing? We e...

On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast we're talking about craft publishing with my guest, Melanie Falick. Melanie has the been the publishing director of STC Craft, an imprint of Abrams, for nearly 12 years. She is proud to be publishing the works of many wonderfully creative authors, including Heather Ross, Denyse Schmidt, Clara Parkes, Natalie Goldberg, Kaffe Fasset, Lotta Ya...

On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast we're talking about producing craft conferences and shows with my guests, Nicole Stevenson and Delilah Snell. Nicole and Delilah are the co-founders of Patchwork Show, a series of indie craft fairs in California, and Craftcation, a yearly craft and business conference. In this conversation we talk about how these two shows came about and wh...

On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast I'm talking about YouTube with Vanessa Vargas Wilson. Vanessa is best known as The Crafty Gemini. She makes weekly instructional videos about sewing, quilting, organic gardening, woodworking, and more. Her YouTube channel has 162,000+ subscribers and over 15 million views. Vanessa and her husband are raising their two young children on a fi...

On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast we're talking about having a polished web presence for your blog and online store with my guests, Alicia Paulson and Arianne Foulkes. Alicia Paulson's blog, Posy Gets Cozy, has a large and devoted following. After eight years using a Typepad template and PayPal buttons to run her blog and business, Alicia hired Aeolidia to do a complete red...