Hello all of you, from here at Sew Curvy Towers!  It's been a while since my last update - I hope you are all keeping well.  I know you are all busy because I've been sending you ALL THE THINGS to make you so!

Demand for corsetry supplies is still unprecenented and I am still working alone except for Sunday afternoons when I'm dragging my poor full time key working hubbie to the studio to help me get a head start on the week by winding up corset boning while I cut miles and miles of coutil fabrics.

this is just some of the corset boning and fabric mountain that Mr Sew Curvy and I prepared this Sunday just gone.  The whole job - him cutting and winding the boning and me cutting the fabric, from orders taken Thurs-Sun, took nearly 4 hours.

During the week while packing your orders,  I have my birds tweeting outside, and my music on and I'm up to my elbows in tissue paper, stripey bags and jiffy envelopes.  Although I try to keep visits to the post office to a minimum for safety (twice a week currently), my post lady is still dressed up like the female version of Hanibal lector (scary mask, behind perspex), and all is as well as can be.  I'm not complaining, but I do want to make it clear why your order may be taking a bit longer than usual.

My coutil cutting list by Sunday	Piles and piles of coutil!

Posting & Processing your Corsetry Supplies

I have been receiving a few 'impatient' emails, demanding to know tracking numbers, proof of postage, etc., even when these have already been sent but where items are taking a bit longer, and some people do not seem to be taking into consideration that on top of everything, we have just had a bank holiday (post offices closed) followed by a weekend - I know it seems like an age, but I am  not Amazon.  I can't pack and admin at the same time, and packing is my priority.  Every email response demanded, is time away from the packing table.  I try to catch up with the computer towards the end of the week - certainly after Monday/Tuesday.  I do 'forget' sometimes even though I am quite efficient at 'flagging'.  If it's been a week, please do feel free to chase me up, but please bear in mind the delays beforehand and calculate accordingly.

Whilst I realise that clients and deadlines don't go away, and I know some are excited and eager to get started on projects,  this is a Global Pandemic, the likes of which hasn't been seen since the Spanish Flu outbreak after the first world war, which came in two waves, and killed millions.  It's hard times for all of us and not a little frustrating, I know.  I myself, on top of trying to keep the business going as efficiently as possible, am also in the process of moving house - I won't even start on the difficulties of trying to do that during a lock-down. People for the most part have been exceptionally patient, kind and understanding, frequently sending me messages of support and solidarity.  These messages mean a huge amount and really keep me going - THANK YOU to those of you who have sent them - there have been many.

Things are taking a long time to get to places, especially outside the UK.  Which brings me to my next very exciting peice of news...

just one of this morning's bags on the way out It's uber heavy!

A New Mail Service for the UK is Coming!

For a while i've been frustrated about the Royal Mail 'recorded mail' service.  Not just because I get the odd shouty person thinking that 'first class recorded' is actually 'priority on the packaging table' (it isn't) but because, the 'recorded' service is not a tracking service.  It's a mechanism by which we can tell if items have been sent and more importantly delivered.  There is no tracking in between.  I know!  It came as a shock to me too when I found out.  Which is why i've been looking for an alternative.

To cut a very long and boring story short, Last week I was contacted by The Royal Mail Business service who I had been in touch with previously around 2 years ago when said service was quite expensive, and beyond the reach of many a small but busy business.  In the interim it seems that they have been researching and developing over at Royal Mail and have realised that a) the future is in mail order  b) there is absolutely tons of business they're missing out on by pricing too high and most importantly c) people like me are actually clogging up rural post offices with sacks of mail which could be dealt with more efficiently in an entirely different 'business' system which is tracked, automated and separate to all the other mail!

So i've signed up to the new improved service!  In approximately two weeks (would have been sooner but for 'youknowwhat'), most UK mail heading out of this studio will be tracked.  Properly tracked.  Not only will it be tracked, but THEY - the Royal Mail - send you an email to tell you your tracking number and when you can expect to receive said items! 

There will be two layers - Tracked 24 and Tracked 48 which do exactly what they say on the tin (but for pandemics).  I will not tier the cost of this by the amount you spend.  The rate will be the same for parcels from 200g to 20kg !  Items under 200g, will still be sent in the usual system because that will be cheaper.

I'll write more about it in a second post, and I wish it could take immediate effect due to my currently having very sore arms lugging all the mail bags to the post office, but soon it will be in place and we will at last, have a proper tracked system!

In the meantime, please be patient and remember the following:

• We are dealing with an unprecedented amount of orders right now
• First class recorded is not 'priority on the packing table'
• Recorded mail is not tracked
• *Urgent orders are not possible atm even if you are a student on a deadline
• We do still take time off over the weekend
• We do not, as a rule, reply to email on any evening especially at weekends.
• We are doing our best to get your order out as quickly as possible
• The mail service is absolutely overwhelmed while running on between 50-80% of their usual resources
• Airmail is taking much longer due to air traffic, customs, your native postal service restrictions due to CV19.
• We can't always supply eveyrthing in your order due to stock shortages and supply chain slowness - if it's on the way we'll let you know, if it's not, we'll send.
• We are really happy that you're all sewing so many corsets and costumes!
• That's 'the Royal We' - because it really is only me.
• If I don't answer emails right away, it's because I'm either packing, or i'm 'officially' off duty (bank holidays/weekends)
• You can get the most up to the minute updates and info by following me on Instagram @sewcurvysupplies  See below for my Sunday/Monday stories:

Are you like me, struggling to remember what day it is right now?  I have to think quite hard of a morning and sometimes count on my fingers!  So today is Thursday on week what? of the lock down?  At least supplies in the food shops are getting more regular and back to normal even if we can't just all pile in like we used to to get our daily bread.

Before I ramble on about what's going on at Sew Curvy HQ I just want to say a MASSIVE THANK YOU to all of you who have been purchasing from me and supporting my little shop!  Thank you from the bottom of my heart, it means that I don't have to worry for now about 'all the things' going on in our shared horror story of covid-19 and hopefully I'm keeping some of you sane with things to do at the same time.

So the shop has continued being uber busy while people decide that now is the perfect time to 'try that thing' they've always wanted to try, and to this end, I put my basic corset kits back on the website last week.  As predicted, they've been flying out the door (albeit, that part was quite slow!).

This week I received a pallet of steel - hurray! - ok it was a week late, but lets be forgiving in these times when delivery drivers around the UK are working twice as hard for not twice as much money.

So, steel boning of all sorts, and the ever popular synthetic whalebone is back in stock - I now order more whalebone than steel, that's how popular it is!

(for my opinions on plastic vs steel, please click HERE and HERE)

Going forward - as I said, volumes are high, and there is still only me packing, posting, admin'ing etc.,

Usually I have an assistant on Mondays - she helps with bits of orders, sets up kit supplies, fills standard packages of stuff (lingerie bits), and does the admin for me - refunds, invoices, the books ... that's quite alot of work I'm also picking up on top of the double/triple volume of orders.

Mr Sew Curvy is now coming in with me on Sunday afternoons to do the bulk of steel picking and winding - do you know that I am now the only supplier who sells boning and other corsetry supplies in units of less than 5 or 10 metres? 

Mr Sew Curvy sporting a mask I made for him

Anyway, for the past two weeks, I've had to disable the shopping basket from Tuesday to Friday, just so that I can cope - I've been getting two weeks of orders in 3 days on some weeks so you can imagine the frenzy in here!

I don't think i'm going to set that closure in stone, i'd rather see how it goes week by week, but if you definately want your supplies by a certain date because you've made promises to clients or similar, then you must must must order 2 weeks in advance.  I received a large order on Monday saying "I need this week" - not possible i'm afraid, not just because of me - and the fact that there may be 60 other orders to pack before your urgent one, but because of the postal and other delivery services etc., there simply are no guarantees right now.

In the meantime, I've been doing a few live's on Instagram and i've also made a little tutorial from one of the questions asked of me, which was about how to set eyelets.  You can see that and much more by following me on Instagram or Facebook on @sewcurvysupplies - it tends to be where I 'announce' things first so is always more 'up to the minute' and is automatically copied to Facebook, if you don't have Instagram.

All about Eyelets Soon to go on IGTV - stay tuned!

So that's it for this week.  KBO as Churchill used to say.  Keep Buggering On!

Hope you have great weekends!

I spoke too soon!  We have had to temporarily disable the shopping cart in order to work through the huge volume of orders received, update stock, and get back on top of the admin.  We will re-open the shop on Friday 24 April in the morning, so do have a browse, and don't fear, there will be more stock available by then as we are expecting a huge delivery of steel, s. whalebone and coutil this week but we need time and space to organise ourselves.

I have also decided to only do only ONE post office run per week.  This will be on a Wednesday morning until further notice.

In the meantime, I discovered how to make a mask (for keeping your droplets to yourself!) and that you can make it from one layer of coutil with a cotton lining.  This makes a sturdy, good quality mask with reasonable filtration due to the close weave of coutil.  The mask above is one layer of small weave herringbone lined with a quilting weight cotton.  Pattern is here.

Don't forget we have an instagram page @sewcurvysupplies and a Facebook group @learncorsetmaking  Pop in and say Hi!

On the plus side, orders have calmed down a bit, but on the minus side, there's still a bit of a backlog which is slowly being cleared.

The problem is getting supplies.  My wholesaler opened their website on Tuesday at 9am, saying that they would take orders till 5pm (bear in mind they had already been closed for 10 days).  I quickly filled my basket with tapes, eyelets, bindings etc., and at 10.59 reach to get my payment details.  By the time I looked back at the screen, the website was closed!  The wholesaler had got 10 days worth of sales in just 2 hours!!! I wrote to ask when they would be open again, and very VERY kindly because I've been with them for so long, they opened up for 5 mins that evening so that I could get my order in.  BUT - that wont be packed for at least a week.  In the meantime, I'm low on boning tapes and eyelets.  Not quite critical, but low enough to still not have kits live until i've assessed things a bit more - which I haven't had time to do because, packing/admin etc.,

Orders are going out regularly though and another thing  I have been doing is keeping more active on Instagram including doing the odd "Live" where I answer your questions on corset making.  These are the questions I answered this week.

I usually do lives at the start of the week while i'm cutting mountains of fabric.  It's a job where I can chat as I go as I don't need to concentrate too much on it!  So, if you're on Instagram and you have a burning corset making question, look me up @sewcurvysupplies, and send the question!

In the meantime, I'm sorry again for the slowness of getting things out - a mixture of overwhelm and supply chain shortage but things do seem to be easing up now as we reach a sort of 'normality' in this strange situation we are all finding ourselves in the middle of!  Stay safe and happy weekend!