How did I get here?

Hi everyone and welcome to my website!

I'm Sabrina and owner/creator of Sewn by Sabrina, which isn't my first business. Let me break it down, I started really getting into sewing back in 2020 during the lockdown. During that time I was able to buy a circa. 1913 Singer hand crank sewing machine. 

With that I started playing around with making so much more than the few dresses and skirts that I had been sewing with just a needle and thread before. For being a slow hand powered machine, it was such a speed boost! 
That made it so I finished projects way faster than I had ever been able to before, and so began the trend of making things for friends as gifts. 

That eventually escalated into wanting to sell my creations and share them with more people. I made an Etsy shop and named it The Craftsmen Guild (which is still active) and once the lockdowns cleared and things started going back to the way it was before; I started doing vendor markets. 
It started with smaller events, like the first one I attended 'All About Mom' a Mother's Day centered event in my hometown of Amherstburg, ON. That was my stepping stone to getting into the world of in person sales. I still remember I made $124 that day and I was beaming with pride that people actually wanted to buy the things I was making. I also met so many wonderful people and had such lovely conversations with people who were happy to encourage a young person in starting their own business. 

With every market that followed afterwards I found the same feeling, sometimes I would make more, less and sometimes way more than I ever envisioned I would. 

Even better than the financial side or getting the experience of how to set up my table, which eventually grew into two, then finally three. I always met nice people, when I started taking my sewing machine with me to bigger markets, like that summer to 'Art by the River' in Amherstburg, ON. I had people come up to me because they heard the ticking sound my sewing machine made while I was killing time between customers coming up to me. 

I had elderly men and women stop and come over and be taken back to hearing their grandmothers sewing on machines just like it. I had others come up and tell me the story of how they had started to sew on an antique Singer, whether that be a hand powered one like mine, a treadle or even a electric knee or peddle powered machine. 

I also had children stop and come up to see my machine, a little girl even shyly asked me how it worked and if she could try it. After making sure it was okay with her mom, I let her come around the table and she turned the handle a few times and made some stitches in the scrunchie I had already under the machine. I explained her how it worked and that everything she saw laid out on my three tables was made using this machine. 

When she left she was telling her mom that she wanted to ask her grandma to teach her how to sew, and how cool she thought it was it that she had got to try such an old machine. 
I have a lot of good memories of selling in person and I miss it a lot, but I have goals to get back to it and build that community and client relationship in my new home area. Hopefully in 2026 I can get into the market scene in the Saguenay QC area and even take the drive down to bigger cities. 

For now, I am an online business owner. Which is hard, since I'm not always the best about making social media posts and filming content to share. Part of my goals for 2025 is actually to improve that. Opening the Shopify site was one of those goals and I'm happy that with help from my partner in the actual building of the site that it's happened. 

I know the site isn't perfect yet and it doesn't have all my products listed, my Etsy shop never had them all listed either, I have so many that some always manage to slip through the cracks. However, I plan on changing that. 

With Sewn by Sabrina I plan to gradually add ALL of my handmade creations, from scrunchies, lanyards, bags, pouches and maybe even some of paintings as prints and some stickers too. That way I have a place where everything is together. 
As I build this up, my plan is to keep The Craftsmen Guild Etsy Shop up and active in the meantime, however I will eventually have to let it go. 
Etsy was a great platform for getting my start, however with the cost of rising fees and poor resources available to help sellers I feel as though opening my own site where I can do business is a good step. 
I'll make another post soon about how and what I use to make everything, so hopefully you tag along and we can go on this adventure together. 
Best of wishes, 

Sabrina :)