THE Q & A SERIES
COPYRIGHT FOR PDF PATTERNS
Hi Emily,
I've been following your story for a while and have been dying to ask you a couple of questions about your work that have been plaguing my mind. Hope you have a couple of minutes to respond.
- Aren't you scared of people stealing your PDF patterns and producing them?
- Is In The Folds your full-time gig?
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Cheers,
Javier
Hi Javier,
Great questions!
I don't really think too much about people taking my PDF patterns and producing them. They obviously easily could and I am sure they have already - but there isn't much I can do about it and worrying about it won't change that.
The sewing community is pretty amazing though and in the past when my patterns have been sold on Etsy or garments made with my patterns to sell, makers have reached out to let me know so that I can contact the seller. Thankfully this hasn't happened too many times over the 6 years I've been in business. It is unfortunate that as patternmakers we need to worry about this, but I guess it's just part of running a business in the digital age!
The other thing is that although it's not ideal that people would take my patterns to produce, this doesn't impact my customer pool. Generally people who sew their own clothes aren't buying that much ready-to-wear, so I'm not likely to lose a customer for a pattern if someone produced that garment from one of my patterns.
The following copyright statement copyright is included in all In The Folds patterns:
To answer your second question, it was only recently that In the Folds became my full-time gig (since November 2021). Before that I was working 2 days a week outside of my business. I also teach casually at a university in Sydney during semester (one day a week) as I really enjoy it and it feels related to my business and keeping my skills up to date and relevant.
Happy sewing,
Emily
For more issues of the Q & A series, you can check out the archive here.
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