13/05/2026
How one little pattern collection changed my whole business 🌊
I can’t believe it’s been almost 3 years since I released my Besides the Seaside collection. It’s been my most popular book at fairs, I’ve had lots of wholesale orders, made pieces from it for ’s NYC pop up and I still post a bunch of them each week from your online orders.
We created all the elements of this book in-house, I designed the patterns, took all the photos (my degree is in commercial photography, didn’t you know 😜) put the page layouts together and Mr. SL designed the cover.
I’ve made 3 books with traditional publishers and they were great, but, to be honest, this little book has made us a whopping 15 times more money than my first published book (taking into account my advance and royalties).
It’s not quite a fair comparison, but there are different elements we can look at. My first publishers were amazing when it came to promoting my book - it got into lots of newspapers and magazines. I still have people coming up to me saying how they knitted THE fox scarf. I haven’t had that kind of PR for this one, but I’m much more established as a designer and tour it around lots of shows.
I absolutely loved making this collection and you have to thank for it, as it was developed for a very special window takeover at their shop in North Norfolk!
Since making it, I’ve gone on to write Under the Sea and Welcome to the Jungle and I’ve just started work on my next one, if you have any guesses as to where I’m going next? 🏙️
