What About Sofiona Designs??

Now that it’s officially out in the open, what exactly do WE feel that Sofiona Designs will bring to the PDF table? I’m so glad you asked! There’s our names, our goals, and a special charity that we have chosen to support.

A tester asked us one day about ourselves and what we wanted them to share about during this upcoming launch and going forward. My answer was (and still is), we are nothing overly amazing, just really fun to hang out with. LOL I joke, but at the same time, we love to laugh! We have a hard time not giving wise-crack answers to questions and when it comes to answering each other, we don’t even hold back. On the other hand, we’re super dedicated and will get down to business when we need to. I would call us both “passionate” (with a bit of a smirk).

We are NOT original in that we are bringing you, wait for it!…. Girls patterns! Our size chart covers the range of sizes 2 – 14.  The hope is to appeal to the higher end of the size chart as well as the small. As a mom of a daughter that is getting to the top of a lot of size charts out there, I wanted to include her. But, here’s the thing. Not many girls that age are interested in having clothes made for them. So it’s a bit of a challenge. In each pattern we have considered options suitable for that age range and we hope to build on that more and more as we go along.

I read a comment by one of our testers this week telling us that her almost 13 yr old daughter wore her Sofiona garment to school and not only did she get compliments, but she admitted her mom made it for her!!! For some 13 yr olds out there, that can be a big deal! 🙂 I just love to hear stories like this.

One of the main things that people will want to know is what level of sewing expertise do our patterns target. This plays directly into one of our main goals. We love good finishing. I like looking on the inside of my makes and feeling just as excited about that view. This means a few more steps in our tutorials and a few more techniques that we include. We have tried to keep our instructions easy to read and we expect that the adventurous beginner and intermediate sewists will enjoy these patterns. We’ve included a Quick Instructions page for the experienced as well.

This ties into Sofiona’s Sewing School. As time goes on we are going to build on tutorials that we feel are applicable to many different patterns. For example, instead of including “How to make your own Bias Binding” in every tutorial that uses bias tape, we have created a link in the pattern to a separate, step by step instruction tutorial that we will catalogue over here on this blog. You can see the first one about bias tape already. This de-clutters the pattern somewhat, but still addresses the needs of beginners.

The overall theme of our tutorials and the names that we have chosen for our patterns are all based off of where we live. The Canadian north. We are surrounded by miles and miles of bush, far from the typical amenities that we grew up around. Our first 4 patterns that you will see are called Raven, Railway, Starry Night and Arctic Fox and on the first page of our tutorials you’ll find a short sentence or two about why we have given each pattern it’s particular name. We’ve had a lot of fun thinking about possible names and bringing as much of our love of the Canadian Shield into our sewing as we can and we can’t wait to share it with you.

Early in our discussions, we discussed the possibility of donating a portion of our sales to a good cause. We knew that affiliate programs are widely used in the PDF tester world and we recognize that it’s very important to some testers/companies, however, we are feeling very positive about the decision to take those funds and put them into a cause that we are both very passionate about.

Enter A21. A non-profit organization that commits to freeing the slaves of today. Whether they be a child sold into the sex-trade or a man working in forced labour – no one should be left behind.

I often feel the weight of the impossible. It seems so insurmountable. Unattainable. And yet here we have a group of people that is out there fighting anyway and we want to help them. It’s through hands-on help for law enforcement, curriculum for schools and organizations, the Walk for Freedom and many other ways that they bring awareness and teach people how to recognize the signs of trafficking around us.

On our website you will find two links on the main page. One will take you a page that shares more in depth about A21 and gives links to their website. The other is the A21 logo on our home page that will take you to a fund-raising page where we will track our donations and you can see how we are doing in reaching our goal. Once we reach that goal, we will start another!! You can also donate extra directly on that page.

I think I’m going to leave it at that for now! This gives you a pretty good idea of what we are about. Next come the pictures!!! See you Monday!

IG: @sofionadesigns

FB group: Sofiona Designs Fan Group (approving requests on Nov 16 🙂