2025 has been a big year. So much of the things I have shared recently have been about what made this year difficult. My Substack was basically born from this premise and has become a lovely little place to talk about the messy middle. As the year wraps up, I’m working on holding space for all the emotions - the acknowledgement of what was difficult, the relief that we’ll be taking a break soon, all the lessons I’ve learned as well as finding space to celebrate.
All the great things me and my little team did in 2025 and the joy and skills we brought our sewing community.
we released 11 new curated projects
A resource designed for when you’re in a bit of a sewing funk and want to get started again. The Sewing Mindset Journal was designed to help you find your way back to motivation and momentum.
This was the first pattern we released for the year and was such a fun make! It features drawstrings that can be used to change the silhouette of the dress and an interesting order of construction that keeps you on your toes.
Jacob dress
The Jacob dress was followed by a Hack Kit where we guided our community through the process of transforming the pattern into different variations of separates. I always love taking a pattern and seeing how far we can push it with some simple pattern making exercises.
This one was a real challenge for us as designers and it felt like a real labour of love when it was finally released. Thankfully the community picked it up and ran with it and enjoyed a detour from garment sewing and an opportunity to learn some new techniques.
I think this one will go down as my favourite project of the year. It was so fun figuring out how it would work and how I could combine as many jeans making techniques as possible. It was great to see how our community took on the challenge and then adapted the pattern to cater to all different kinds of tools
The Burwood jeans felt like a real achievement. For years we have wanted to release a jeans pattern in this year we finally did! I was so happy with then ITF take on the classic jeans and love how it fits into the rest of our ITF pattern collection. It really filled a hole!
This was one of those projects that I hadn’t seen coming. We were deep in tool roll sewing when I realised that the tool roll and jeans projects were becoming huge and our community was going to need a bit of a palette cleanser after those. The Care and Repair Kit felt like the perfect remedy. A good excuse to slow down and learn some skills to ensure longevity of our denim.
This was another fun one to design and felt like it really brought me back to the signature In the Folds aesthetic. It was a study in playing with shape, form and then how to bring it all together into a pattern that felt approachable for makers who wanted to make something a little different.
There were our final two projects of the year (apart from Curated : The Final Fold) and were important ones for me to do before wrapping up Curated. We have had so many questions about sewing delicate fabrics over the years, and I felt like these resources were important skills to leave our community with before moving on from Curated. Being able to use patterns we already had in our collection in the Hack Kit felt like such a fun and creative challenge that really supported the whole ethos behind Curated.
The Q&A series
As always, we answered a lot of questions in our weekly Q&A series. I have loved writing this series and connecting with makers in this way. It’s easy for me to assume what questions people will have, but having the opportunity to answer questions directly from our community gives me a chance to stretch my brain and skills, as well as give others a chance to get the information they really need to step up their making.
The team
This year my little team expanded and then down-sized. We said goodbye to ITF favourites Alys, Leanne and Xanthe and then welcomed Courtney. Alongside these core ITF team members, we have some lovely contractors that help the smooth running of our projects - Josephine our extended size fit model, Elena our grader and illustrator, Betsy our extended size drafter and grader and Lee our project editor. I want to thank all these people for the time, energy, skills and effort they put into helping me run this little business. I really couldn’t do it without you.
Courtney and I met up recently for an in-person working session
The personal
2025 has been a big year for me personally. My toddler started going to daycare 4 days a week and finally started sleeping in a more predictable way. This gave me the headspace and energy to “go back to work” in a way I hadn’t since she was born in 2022. It’s probably no surprise that with this shift, I finally had the headspace to question whether the rhythm and output of Curated was still working, and eventually decide to say goodbye to it. It is so easy to just keep doing the same thing when you’re on autopilot, so although it has been a challenge, I am glad I was able to dedicate some of my headspace to these big questions this year.
I will also be welcoming a new bub to the family in the first part of 2026. And like anything big and life-shifting, it has made me think carefully about the kind of work I want to do in this next season, and how to build it in a way that feels sustainable for me and supportive for you.
And this brings me to talking about what’s coming in 2026…
A new experiment - Making, Again
Early in the new year we will be launching a new little project - something that we are seeing as a bit of an experiment. It will be a gentle, community-centred project designed to help you reconnect with your creativity through slower, more intentional making.
Rather than feeding you new patterns, we will be providing prompts and experiments - as an invitation to notice, reflect and play in small, meaningful ways. Together, we’ll use curiosity, conversation and low-pressure exploration to understand what we truly want to make and wear, and how making can fit into the lives we’re living right now. It’s not about productivity or perfection, but finding our way back to the joy of making, one small step at a time.
If you’d like to be the first to hear about it when it goes live, you can pop your details here.
One of the things I love about Making, Again is that it isn’t built around speed, urgency or constant output. It will live in an intentionally slower rhythm - small touchpoints, gentle prompts, and a community that carries itself as much as it is carried by us. It’s a project designed to flex around real life, and real life includes pregnancy, birth, tiredness, joy, uncertainty and change.
I also won’t be doing this alone. Courtney will be working alongside me throughout the process, helping hold the structure, support the community, answer questions and keep things moving when I need to rest or step back. We’ve planned Making, Again to be truly collaborative - a shared project, not something dependent on one person’s bandwidth.
So while my energy and capacity may shift over the year ahead, the heart of this project won’t. The prompts will continue. The reflections will continue. The community will continue. And the work we do together - the noticing, the experimenting, the slow return to making - will unfold at the steady, thoughtful pace it was always meant to.
In many ways, Making, Again feels like exactly the right kind of project to hold during pregnancy: gentle, spacious, flexible, and rooted in curiosity rather than pressure.
A quick note about the holiday break
Our inbox will be set to out of office from 18 December to 5 January as we take some time to rest, reset, and gather inspiration for the year ahead. During this period, Curated members can still connect with one another in our Mighty Networks group, and digital pattern orders will continue to be available as usual. We’ll be back in early January, refreshed and ready for a new year of making together.
Happy sewing,
Emily