These Unexpected Apps Will Level Up Your Sewing

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Podcast Transcript

Haley
And I'm Haley.

Sarai
And this is Seamwork Radio.

Welcome back to Seamwork Radio, where we share practical ideas for building a creative process so you can sew with intention and joy. Haley's out on parental leave with her new baby right now, so I'm going to be flying solo this week and giving you some really practical tips and tricks. We've also got a whole bunch of interviews lined up with some pretty incredible guests from the world sewing that you're really not going to want to miss. So stay tuned all summer for that, and then we'll welcome back Haley in the fall. All right, so today we're talking about five apps that you may not have used before that can really level up your sewing. We're going to cover apps you can use to get creative while you plan your sewing, apps that help you stay organized, and even my favorite app for helping you sketch your projects.

All right, so let's talk about this. A lot of you might know know this already, but in addition to sewing, I'm also an avid gardener. And in fact, I'm incredibly sore right now because I was pulling weeds all weekend long. I literally spent all day Saturday, all day Sunday, out in my garden, pulling weeds and hoeing and digging holes. And my body is really feeling it today. But gardening has really taught me a lot about sewing and a lot about other hobbies. But one of the main things is how to stay ultra-organized. And that's because with gardening, there's just a ton of information and timelines to manage. There's supplies that I need, there's things I have to follow up on, and there's things I have to keep track of for later. I need to know when I planted things, when I can harvest things. It's just a whole lot to keep track of.

Luckily, sewing is a lot less complicated more complicated than that. But I've discovered that there are some really cool apps that I've used to manage my garden and that I've learned about through gardening. And they're apps that you can actually use for a lot of other hobbies, too, because they're very general purpose apps. They're not necessarily related to gardening or related to sewing. And it's just something that I can apply to a lot of different creative hobbies. So I wanted to share some of those with you today. And they may be things you've heard of, but may be things that you have never heard of.

So here are five apps that you might not expect that you can use to level up your sewing. Okay, so the first one I want to mention to you is one that I personally really, really love. I think I've mentioned it on the podcast before, but I really enjoy using this one, and it's something that was new to me through a gardening class that I took online, and it's called Milanote. And Milanote is a really flexible visual app that you can use to help organize ideas and inspiration in a very visual board-like format. So you can actually create these big mood boards in it. You can use it as a mood board. You can also use it as a way to plan things because you can insert all kinds of stuff in it, including to-do lists, descriptions, text, images, all kinds of stuff, even color palettes. You can add all of this stuff into your board. So it provides a lot more flexibility than something, for example, like Pinterest, which is really just about collecting images together. So there are a lot of ways you can use it for your sewing. You can create project planning and inspiration boards, much like you would with Pinterest, but then you can really have a lot more control about what the boards look like.

And again, you can add a lot more information, including non-image information, into your board. It's a great planning tool for that, especially if you're a really visual person like I am. You can use it for pattern and fabric organization, so you can even use it to catalog your sewing patterns and catalog your fabric if you want to. You can create step-by-step goals and checklists, so you could add those to a board and have your visual inspiration and your checklist all in one place. You can keep your measurement and your fitting notes in there as well. You could even create a board for each project you're doing and keep all that in one place so you have all your fitting notes from it in one place, which is a cool way to journal your projects in a really, really visual way. You can use it to budget your expenses. You can journal your projects and then put the finished photos right there into the board. There's just a million different ways you can use it. I think it's a really cool, extensible tool. You can sign up and get, I think you get three free boards when you sign up, which you can use.

I want to say you get three free boards, at least when I signed up, you did. So if you like it and you want to create more boards than that, you could sign up for a paid account, but otherwise you can use it for free. So that's the first tool I wanted to share. It's one that I really, really like, and it's really a fun tool. Haley and I have even used it for design and feedback on design and putting together mood boards together in a more collaborative way. So it's a really nice tool for that as well.

Number two is one I have definitely talked about before, and we even have a YouTube video on this one, which is Procreate. So Procreate is a digital illustration app designed for iOS, and it's especially for the iPad. And the way you can use it for sewing is to use it for sketching. So basically, it is a drawing tool, and it has some incredible capabilities, and a lot of professional illustrators actually use it for creating illustrations because there's so much you can do with it. You do need to have an iPad and an Apple pencil to use it, though.

So it is limited in that way, but it is a really cool app, and you can use it to sketch your sewing plans. So you can create a custom croquis and use that as a layer on your drawings and then just draw directly on your iPad and draw your designs for things that you want to make right on top of that custom croquis. You can even create the custom croquis yourself by inserting a photo of yourself. So you just take a photo of yourself with your phone or with your iPad, wearing some tight-fitting clothing. You can insert it into Procreate. You can trace the outline of your body right there in Procreate, and then you can delete that photo layer, and you have a custom croquis that you can use again and again. So that's something that I do. Again, we have a whole video on this on YouTube, so check out our YouTube channel. It's at Seamwork Video, and you can watch exactly how I sketch my plans using Procreate. A really, really cool tool. You can also sketch your own fabric designs using it. You could create repeating patterns on it. There are some great skillshare classes.

I'm actually taking one right now that's all about creating, repeating designs using Procreate, which is really, really fun. I'm just taking that for fun, and it's really cool. Then you can print them with a service like Spoonflower. That's a It's a really cool thing that you can do with Procreate, and I find it a lot more intuitive and easier than using something like Photoshop, mostly because you can directly sketch using your Apple pencil. You can plan embroidery or applique by sketching it onto your flat, or you can insert pictures as well right there into Procreate. You can use it almost to create little mood boards for yourself. You can document your sewing projects visually using Procreate and draw right on top of them. You can visualize color and fabric combinations because you have your whole swatch palette right there in Procreate, so you can create all kinds of fabric and color combinations right there on your screen to see how things will look. You can put your flat together with different color palettes and see how they'll look, which I find really helpful. I really like to look at things in order to really fully visualize them.

You can print out your sketches and you can add them directly to your queue So you can use Procreate to sketch out what you want to make, and then you can print those out. You can add them into your sewing planner. If you have a free sewing planner, you can put them directly in there. That's what I do. I print them, I put them, I tape them into my sewing planner, and then I take the pages from the sewing planner and I put them up on the cork board that's in my sewing shed. So again, check out the YouTube video. It'll show you exactly how I use it on my iPad, and I think that'll give you a whole bunch of ideas for how you could use it, too.

The next app I want to talk about is Todoist, and this is a task management app. So if you could use a daily or a weekly reminder for all your sewing tasks, this is something that you can try. So here's how you can use it for your sewing. You can create a sewing queue with it, and you can break down each project into tasks. Then you can set due dates, you can prioritize things, you can keep your plans really flexible enough that you don't feel overwhelmed. If you do tend to feel overwhelmed by all the different tasks and timelines involved in the projects that you have in mind, this can be a really good way to keep them organized and be a little bit more secure about what needs to be done.

It also has filters and labels, and you can attach notes, you can attach links and files, and it has a daily and a weekly goal tracker, so you can watch your progress as well. I know I've mentioned before, using more scheduling tools or to-do list tools, it's a little bit of a double-edged sword. It can make you feel like, Oh, this is another work project that I have to do. Sometimes I do feel that way. Other times, I need something to help me stay organized. I mentioned this in a previous episode, but it does go in waves for me. You might find the same thing that sometimes tools like this add to the overwhelm, and sometimes they really relieve it. Just bear in mind where you are and how your your feeling about it.

Number four is Notion, my favorite. I love Notion. Notion is an all-in-one workspace app that functions as a database, but it also allows you to track projects, to create mood boards, and to just stay really organized. We use it at Seamwork somewhat, and I use it personally quite a lot, but there are a lot of different ways that you can use it for your sewing as well. You can use it to catalog your patterns and fabric. Because it functions as a database, you can set up a spreadsheet view and filter things really easily so you can find what's in your stash. You can find the fabric you have, you can find patterns you have. You can use it to create mood boards and to upload pictures along with notes. You can use it to create your own personal measurement chart where you can keep your body measurements and your ease preferences up to date. You can create templates for sewing projects and turn it into your sewing queue and journal. You can use it to track spending and set goals. There are just a lot of different ways that you can use Notion. I mentioned before, I want to create my own little Notion sewing planner and fabric tracker for myself.

If I do, I will share it with you guys because you can share templates from Notion so that other people can use it as well. Notion does have a bit of a learning curve because there's so much you can do with it. It's so so customizable. So I recommend looking up some Notion tutorials on YouTube. There's a ton of them out there. People are really, really into Notion. It's got its own little cult following, and there's just crazy things you can do with it. But there's a lot of good intro videos on YouTube about Notion. So if that's something that you want to check out, I definitely recommend doing a little tour with some YouTube videos to get accustomed to how all the features work and how much you can do with it, and I think it'll give you a lot of ideas.

The final tool I wanted to mention is ChatGPT. Ai, I think, has some benefits and it has some drawbacks for sure. It's not always perfect. Chatgpt definitely requires some fact-checking when it comes to sewing techniques, and especially with fitting techniques. It's not always correct, and you may need to do some extra research, but it can be a useful tool if you're feeling stuck and you just need to get things moving.

So a few prompts you can use. You can help it to set a project plan or to use a sewing cue or to create a sewing queue for yourself. You can ask it to list out pros and cons for different fabric and garments. You can ask it for fabric and material recommendations, and use those as a starting point. Again, you definitely want to fact-check anything that ChatGPT tells you. See it as a way to to generate ideas rather than to give you defined answers. You could tell it about a fabric you have in your stash and ask for help picking a pattern. You can ask it for organization and storage tips for your fabric. There's a lot of different ways that you can use it to help you generate some ideas that will help you start to get going. Again, it's not perfect. It's not really a substitute for your own knowledge or the knowledge of others, but it can help you with ideas for sure. All right, so I'm going to recap these apps so you can check them out, and we'll link these in the show notes as well.

The number one was Milanote. I absolutely love this for creating mood boards that have a lot of different types of information on them, not just images. Really, really helpful for those of us who are very visual. Number two is Procreate, which is a sketching app, which you can use to sketch your projects, and you can also use to design fabric if you want. ToDoist for managing all your tasks and developing timelines and reminders and goals. If you really want to break down your projects and get them organized, it's a great app for that. Notion, which is a very extensible, very customizable tool that you can use for a variety of things, but you can really just think of it as a database. It's a way that you can organize a lot of information and look it up very easily later. Then five is ChatGPT, which you can use to generate ideas. So I mentioned ChatGPT, and that information there is not always correct. I think humans are still far better at helping you with sewing. And we're lucky because we have some of the nicest and most helpful sewists that you can imagine in our own community at Seamwork.

Our team, along with thousands of Seamworkers, are there to talk to you and to cheer you on as you sew. And you can ask any question about sewing with absolutely no judgment, and you'll get some amazing answers. You can share your finished projects, you can create goals, and we'll even email you reminders to keep you on track. So it's a perfect place to go if you need a quick boost of creative energy. So if you haven't checked out our community, definitely do that. You can get a 50% off lifetime discount at seamwork.com/go/podcast50. And if you like this episode, we would love it if you would leave us a review. We read every single review we get, and we absolutely I absolutely love hearing from you guys. If you want to leave us a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, it really helps other people to find the podcast, and we really appreciate it. You can also find us on YouTube at Seamwork Video. Please join me there because we are creating so many awesome videos over on our YouTube channel. If you enjoy the podcast, you'd probably also really enjoy our videos.

You can follow us on Instagram at Seamwork. And again, if you'd like to join Seamwork and become part of our private community, plus get access to hundreds of sewing patterns and dozens of sew-along classes, our podcast listeners get a 50% off lifetime discount when you join at Seamwork.com/go/podcast50. So that's Seamwork.com/go/podcast50. And that's it for me this week. I'm Sarai, and this is Seamwork Radio.

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