Whew! Finally a few minutes to sit down and share here with you about all that is going on at Sew Simple lately.
If you’ve been a long time customer and came in at least every six months or so for the last several years, you know that I like to rearrange furniture, or in this case, display tables, machines, etc. Mr. Heckman was a very good sport about my attempts to change things up.
As owners of Sew Simple of Lynchburg, Eric and I have really switched things up. Not only have display tables been moved, but so has the cash register counter! That leads to a whole new traffic pattern and I really like it as it gives us more room to set up for classes and to show new merchandise. There are new machines as well as a huge display of nearly every Janome sewing machine foot ever created. We’ve brought in a full display of our favorite embroidery thread, Glide and are awaiting a display of serger thread.
I’ve done a little painting almost every weekend to freshen things up as well as moved some lighting fixtures to brighten things up as well. The shop is now the location for shooting my YouTube videos, so the lighting has to be good.
One thing that hasn’t changed is serving our customers with smiles and making sure that their machines are running great. Eric is constantly working on machines, doing house calls (Yes, we can come to you if need be!), and as usual, being the chief Mr. Fix-it for me. He also is my “shipping department” for our online shop (Amy’s Quilting Adventures), sending out orders of rulers, ruler feet, and small quilting tools around the world. All our products and shipping materials are in the shop as well!
Our three kids are usually in the shop during the summer too. My eldest is very helpful around the shop. He vacuums most mornings and enjoys “opening the shop” by raising the blinds and putting up the “OPEN” sign. He’s a great “go fetch-it” helper for both of us. My daughter is incredibly creative and loves to sew. She’s not fond of patterns, so her creativity sometimes doesn’t quite turn out as expected, but she’s learning a ton. Our youngest? Well, he’s the chief giver of smiles and cuteness.
You may have noticed that the Heckmans have shut down the old sewsimple.biz site, so change your bookmarks to this site, or add us to your feed reader (I use Feedly myself to be notified of new posts from my favorite sites). Speaking of social media, I have added links to my regular blog, the shop’s Facebook page, shop’s email, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. here on the site. See the icons at the top for those links. I got my start as a quilting blogger, then Craftsy instructor, so I’m probably more active online than most small business owners.
My next big goal is to get my line up of classes for this fall pulled together and let you know about them.