One of the questions we get asked quite often as a husband-and-wife team is “who came up with the idea for Stash Hub?”. I’m pretty sure it was Doug’s idea but he insists it was mine, so I guess no one is taking responsibility!
Ever since I started sewing in 2020, I’ve felt like I needed a way to keep a record of my fabric and patterns to avoid feeling overwhelmed and keep my spending in check. In the very early days, I started with a Word document with photos pasted in. Anyone who has ever attempted to format a Word document with pictures in will know that this was pure folly and will be entirely unsurprised that this method did not last long.
The next (and much more successful) port of call was Trello. This is a popular way of cataloguing fabric and pattern stashes amongst the sewing community, with which I’m sure many of you are familiar. As is a common theme in our relationship, Doug came to my aid with getting set up on Trello, as he was familiar with the platform, having used it for work.
Although Trello has its positives as a stash organisation platform (its visual, easy to access on phone and web) it also has it’s drawbacks too. It takes some thought to set up the boards and what you want each list to show, plus once you’ve got all your info in there it’s difficult to filter your stash as all the info gets dumped into one description box.
Even though Doug is a software engineer, working on apps as part of his day job, he loves developing apps in his own time too. When I asked Doug what he likes about creating apps he said he liked the combination of skills exercised – logic, creativity and even a bit of psychology when working on UX design and thinking about how people will interact with the app.
Although I wasn’t able to get it out of him directly during my ‘interview’ (which consisted of me hovering over Doug’s shoulder and badgering him whilst he was trying to cook dinner) I think being able to use technology to solve a problem is a key part of Doug’s love for software development. Doug saw my ever-growing fabric stash and my struggle to keep it organised and thought ‘I could make an app for that’.
Now let’s take a moment for my own contribution! Doug is quite happy to make an app that only I will use, as he enjoys learning through the creation process. But I assured him that stash management was a common struggle across the sewing community. We used my knowledge of sewing and the sewing community as a starting point for creating an app that could help lots of people. We wanted to make the app aesthetically pleasing and easy to use, as these are things I believe are important to the sewing community.
Stash Hub is very much entwined with the sewing community. Doug hates the slogan ‘created by sewists, for sewists’ but it’s true! We are SO KEEN for your feedback as it will make the app so much better. For example, the original release didn’t have the Projects tab but we decided to prioritise working on it as we had so many requests for it. Now it’s one of our most popular features! Contact us if you have any ideas for Stash Hub and don’t forget to check out our road map to see what’s coming up next. Ironically, it’s on Trello.