Behind the scenes of Sew Hip

Have you ever wondered the team at Sew Hip manage to put together the UK's top selling sewing magazine?  Purchased by over 20,000 people per month and read by thousands more Sew Hip is a great mix of articles, patterns, news, interviews and projects including clothing, things for children and for the home.  So where do they find all of their content?  How do they decide what to write about?  Do they ever worry they will run out of ideas?  Who helps pull the magazine together?  Busting with questions like these I headed off to my day behind the scenes with Sew Hip.

I first met Alice Blackledge, the editor of Sew Hip, four months ago at my first exhibition in the NEC.   She had recently been promoted from production assistant to editor and within just a couple of months was already being credited with turning the magazine around.  An intelligent graduate with a degree in English and a background in textiles Alice had joined KALMedia shortly after graduating as a trainee production assistant to Sew Hip, Inside Crochet and Yarn Forward just this time last year. 

A year later she is the editor of Sew Hip.  She admits it does still feel somewhat surreal sometimes "I was tempted to loiter near the Sew Hip's in WHSmith and see if anyone recognised me from the editors photo" she laughs.  After showing me around the Sew Hip office, a small but comfortable office of around 8 desks and shelves of future projects and items to be featured in the magazine, and introducing me to the team we go for coffee so I can interrogate her properly.

She first explains who everyone is that works on the magazine and what their role is:

Kerrie Allman  - Senior Editor:  Kerrie is the owner of Kalmedia and founder of Sew Hip.  She is also the senior editor and checks everything that goes into the magazine, as she does with all 3 of her magazines. Click on her name to see our interview with Kerrie.

The Editorial Team

Becky Skuse - Managing Editor:  Described as a ‘genius' by Alice, Becky oversees everything that goes into the magazine and does the first edit of everything before it goes to Kerrie.

Isabel Buxton - Production Assistant:   Izzy works 1 day a week for Sew Hip and the other 4 days on Yarn Forward.  She writes the regular features such as the news, the letters page etc.

Dave Harvey - Art Editor:   Dave is the senior editor and has overseen the recent re-design and has the final say in respect of the layout and art content.

Rob Eyres - Deputy Art Editor:  He is responsible for the layout, for putting the pages together.

Nat Brian - Junior designer:   He assists with the layout, takes a lot of the photos for regular features like the news section and does the ad design.

Loretta Bland and Cassie Ward - Advertising:  Although based in a different office from the editorial team Loretta and Cassie are also an essential part of the magazine, they sell the advertising for the ads pages.

Plus of course there is Alice, the editor.  Her role is very multifaceted; when I arrived in the morning I found her colouring in the diagrams that accompany the projects and patterns but she assured me she doesn't just spend all day colouring in!  She is responsible for commissioning all content that appears in the magazine, tech editing, first sub editor on all raw text, production on pages, the flat plans (the

The Art Team

page layout of the entire magazine), producing the diagrams to accompany patterns/projects, managing budgets and handling the paperwork! I start off by asking her the question everyone wants to know: how does she find content for the magazine.   She explains that it is a combination of word of mouth and the internet.  She religiously reads blogs and sites like Whip Up and True Up to find out what people are making and when she sees something she thinks would be good for the magazine she contacts the maker and asks them to contribute.  They tend to narrow it down to people within the UK as they need samples sent out to them.

She also has a few regular contributors who she will go to with a specification for something she would like in the magazine and ask if they can make a pattern for it.   Plus, as you will all be happy to hear, she does welcome submissions.  She often gets articles/projects e-mailed through to her and some of them she does use for the magazine (including one we e-mailed to her recently that will be appearing next month).  If she doesn't use it she will give feedback as to why it wasn't quite right for the magazine.   

She advised they like to have a good mix of patterns, projects and articles in the magazine, some garments, something for children, something for the home etc.  She believes this is one of the things that makes Sew Hip stand out from the other magazines, they offer a range of projects, not just one type throughout.   Another thing I always wondered was whether people get paid for writing for the magazine.  She explained that if they commission someone to make something specifically for the magazine they will pay them to cover the cost of materials, postage etc. Generally they do pay for patterns but often they offer a link to the designer's website or shop so that the contributor gets publicity from contributing to the magazine.

They try to use a range of designers and are always looking for new ideas and new designers because as much as they may love someone's work every designer has their own unique style and they don't want the readers to see

Mouse project from next issue

too much of the same thing.   They keep it fresh by using a combination of people who have contributed before (such as Katharine Kerrison who designed the wedding dress pattern and the recent tulip dress) and new designers.  One aspect of her role that Alice really loves is giving a new designer a break, helping their designs reach thousands of readers.  She describes Sew Hip as being "an independent magazine that champions independent makers". I was curious as to why they use diagrams rather than photos to illustrate the projects and patterns.  Alice explains that contributors send into photos with their submissions but not all contributors have high quality cameras and the right lighting to photograph the stages of the construction, plus it can be difficult to see the stitching in a photo.  By using the diagrams not only can they highlight the stitching and detail but they can ensure continuity throughout the magazine. I have to ask how they can tell that they are getting right; do they get much feedback from the readers?   ‘We get a lot of feedback, and I really appreciate that people take the time to send us e-mails and messages,  Within a couple weeks of the last issue coming out I'd had 3 people e-mail over photos of the tulip dress that they had just made." Replies Alice.   She goes on to explain that the benefit of the internet is that people can feedback what they think of the magazine, whether good or bad, immediately.  If people are having issues with an instruction on a pattern for example the internet allows Alice or the designer to respond instantly with help.  Sew Hip are also ahead of the other sewing magazines by being on Facebook and Twitter which allows them a lot of interaction

Colouring in diagrams

with their readers. 

Another question that had to be asked is do they keep an eye on what the competition are doing?  Alice admits that she does have the occasional flick through the other magazines but says it's more from personal interest than business.  They don't have a set process of buying all the other magazines and checking what they are up to like I imagined they might have.  She said she has come to accept that there will inevitably be overlap amongst the magazines, fabrics trends, sewing news and new books will probably be picked up by more than one magazine but that is unavoidable.  She doesn't view it as a big problem as she considers all the magazines to be quite different.   She feels Sew Hip fills a gap in the sewing market, they are not advert led like Sew magazine, they do not focus on fashion as much as Cloth magazine, they aren't concentrated on dressmaking like Sewing World and they are not as focused on the artistic aspect of sewing as Selvedge.   

Many people wanted me to ask how they could get a job at Sew Hip.  As mentionned previously they always welcome contributitions to the magazine so that is one way to see your name in print.  They also said that they are always happy for people to come and work on a voluntary basis; they currently have an intern plus someone on work experience.  So how long does it take to put an issue together from start to finish?  They work on a rolling 6 month system for planning content.  They tend to have 4-5 weeks to put together each individual issue.  The week after the deadline for the previous issue has passed is mainly spent on planning future issues, sorting out the budget and sending out commissions.  The second week Alice starts editing the

Project shelves

patterns and starting to pull all the content for the issue together.  She said she spends a lot of her time chasing people to submit their projects, she finds that creative types are not always good with deadlines!   She does keep some stock articles that they can use if commissions are not received in time and they can also take an article from a future issue to use. On the third week everything gets sent over to the art team to put the layout together and start making it actually look like a magazine.  It gets edited before going over to art and again afterwards.  The last week is putting the finishing touches on it, getting the magazine edited by both Becky and Kerrie and sending it back to art if any further work is needed.  The last week can often involve a lot of extra hours being put in and working late.  Then it gets sent off to the printers in pdf format for a sample copy to be made up, once authorised the full run is printed and they get sent copies of the magazines about 2 weeks later.  Then the whole cycle starts again! So what is coming up in Sew Hip?  Letting me in on an exclusive Alice tells me that Sew Hip is sue 19 has been revamped.  It starts with a unique star of the front over - A sock monkey!  The layout and colours have been altered a bit, plus a big change that will be welcomed by many is all patterns will now go up to a size 20, instead of a size 16.  Alice explained that with their pattern sheet being an A0 they could not take the sizes higher than a 20 as it would be too difficult to fit all the pieces in and still keep a useable format but many people have asked for patterns to be made larger so this will be a welcome improvement.   They will also be including plus size models in the magazine too.  Not as special one off issue as some magazines do but on an ongoing basis.  They will also be including a feature on grading patterns in the future to help people take them beyond a size 20 should they need to. 

Alice

Another new change will be a regular Learn to Sew section.  This will include a few pages of basic sewing instructions/techniques that are the same each issue, so for someone buying for the first time they will have everything they need to make the projects within the magazine without having to look elsewhere.   They will also introduce new techniques to help people learn new skills with each issue.   Alice's aim is that people can pick up the magazine and make any of the projects or patterns within it from the information from the magazine.

Find out more about Sew Hip by visiting their website: http://www.sewhip.co.uk/ or their blog: http://sewhip.wordpress.com/ or find them on Twitter or Facebook.