new features

We're excited to announce that you can now choose to make your projects and profile publicly visible, making them much easier to share! *cue cheering*

Project visibility options

You might have noticed that there's a new little box at the top of each project page, indicating its visibility status:

At the bottom of the project form (when you edit or add a project) the last field you'll see now is "Who can view this project?" You can choose from:

• Only me
• Textillia members
• Everyone (public)

"Only me" can be useful if you're working on a gift or a swap project that you don't want the recipient to see until they've received it, or really any other projects that you just want to keep private. Just don't forget to set it to "Textillia members" or "Everyone" once you mark it as finished, otherwise nobody else will get to see it!

"Textillia members" is the default we've been using up until now, which means that everyone who's a member can see it once they're logged in.

"Everyone (public)" means that someone who doesn't even have a Textillia account can see it when given the link to the page - so for example, if you share a project you've finished to Facebook, your friends can all see it without needing to log in! When you choose this, it also enables the "Share" links on the page for Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter (they appear below the grey sidebar box on desktop, or at the very bottom of the screen on mobile).

Surprise! We have a fun new bit of functionality for you! 

While most of what Bruno's been building the last couple months has been behind the scenes, we know how much everyone struggled with the fabric reference field on projects, so we wanted to improve that sooner than later. We've taken your feedback and designed a new and improved fabric reference field with a fancy fabric browsing tool that around here we've nicknamed the "fabric picker". 

Here's how it works...

As you might have noticed, we rolled out a whole pile of new functionality the week before last! I'll walk you through it all so you have an idea of what we've added, which falls into six categories:

1. New Quilt fields
2. New Embroidery fields
3. New Garment section for body shape/alterations on projects
4. Thread collections (and overhaul of threads)
5. Quilting fabric precuts
6. Refined form design

Before telling you about all of that, we need to say a huge thank you to everyone who helped hash out the details of what was needed in the forums, and for your patience as we embarked on this a few months back and crammed way too much in so it took longer than expected! Note to self: smaller chunks next time! :)

Hey everyone, hope summer is treating you well! In case you don't follow us on Instagram or missed the post, we'll be a bit less active on the newsletter and blog post front over the summer, while I take a little breather and try to get this pesky arthritis flare to calm down. But fear not, we're not going anywhere! Textillia is still open 24/7 for you to hang out, search the database, and plan and post your projects - plus, Bruno has commenced on the gargantuan task of implementing Groups! He'll be focusing on that for the remainder of the summer, but we'll also try and squeeze in a few smaller bits here and there. Without further ado...

The Books Section!

The first part of Textillia's new Resources section is up: Books! The books section works much like the patterns and fabrics sections. You can help build it by adding books that are missing, and filling in all of the fields as completely as possible so they show up in the right places around the site (like the author's page, the pattern pages, etc.) As usual, just search for the book you're looking for, and if you don't find it, add it!

The Queue is here!!!

One of the features we knew we wanted to add soon when we launched was the Queue, and we were so excited to roll it out last week! If you're familiar with the queue functionality on Ravelry, this is similar but with some important differences, most notably that your queue will display both patterns you've queued and any "active" projects you're working on. Essentially anything you're planning to work on or currently working on will show up - it behaves as a complete to-do list, as we know it's common to work on multiple projects at once and struggle with staying organized!

It's time for another big update of new functionality we've added to Textillia over the last week and a bit - Bruno has been busy! But first...

A quick PSA: We've been having some issues with our website hosting provider (says every new website ever), so we're preparing to move to a new one before Bruno heads to visit his friends and family in Belgium for the holidays. This will mean a little service outage when we have to take the site offline briefly, so stay tuned as we'll be sure to announce when the planned downtime will be!

Friending + friend updates on your studio page

Friending is here! You can now friend your friends! (Friend is a verb now, right?) Just look for the red "+ Add friend" button on their Member profile page.

Hi everyone!

Thanks for an amazing first week! More than 600 700 (we passed 700 overnight!) of you already signed up and we have been totally blown away by your support and are so excited to see you all using the site and making yourselves at home. Bruno has been busy this week, adding new functionality and fixing a few things here and there. Here's a quick overview of what's new on the site for anyone who's not subscribed to the newsletter... (If you're not, sign up at the bottom of the page!) 

My studio

Your "My Studio" pages have come to life and will show more kinds of messages as time goes on! Now when someone favorites your business page, or favorites or comments on one of your projects, you'll see a message there letting you know. Check there regularly to see who's interacting with you, and be sure to show some love to others by clicking the heart icon or leaving a comment when you find projects or businesses you like too!

We've finally launched!!! Welcome to Textillia, the sewing community's very own cozy corner of the internet - we're so excited to have you all here! As most of you know, we've decided to launch early in a Beta period - that means there are a few rough edges! We decided to do this for many reasons, and one of them is that it'll let us see how you use the website and adapt to that as we continue to build it, make improvements, and add new features.

Before you get started, here are some quick pointers and tips to help get you settled in...