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Welcome to The Coletterie!

I am very excited to announce our brand new blog name and design here at Colette Patterns!

You may remember that I asked for your help coming up with a name for the blog waaaay back in February. We’ve been hard at work on redesigning the blog, and today is the official launch! We’re also going to be redesigning the main site this month, but thought we’d get this out there first since it was ready to go.

  • We’re now located at coletterie.com. But don’t worry, all your old bookmarks, links, and URLs will still work. They’ll just redirect here.
  • We have a wider format, so we’ll be able to post even larger photos!
  • We’ve cleaned up the blog as a whole, so there’s a lot less clutter. Right now, we don’t have a blogroll, so I may add in a rotating list of links a little later.

I hope you guys like it!

Also.

Please stay tuned this week, because in addition to our regular posts, I have BIG announcement coming on Wednesday!

Sarai Mitnick

Founder

Sarai started Colette back in 2009. She believes the primary role of a business should be to help people. She loves good books, sewing with wool, her charming cats, working in her garden, and eating salsa.

Comments

Susan

August 8, 2011 #

Wow! Looks fabulous. Congrats! :)

Tasia

August 8, 2011 #

Looks great – pretty and fresh!

KatyRenee

August 8, 2011 #

Looks fabulous. Congrats!!

Tasha

August 8, 2011 #

YAY! So pleased to see it come to life. It looks fab!

Tilia

August 8, 2011 #

It’s a beautiful layout, fresh and clean. Finding posts is regrettably even more difficult than with the old layout. No tag or category search possible…

Sarai

August 8, 2011 #

You can click the category under any post to see more in that category (jn this case it would be the link that says “colette patterns news”). And we added a big button in the sidebar that links to all the tutorials, which seem to be the ones people do look for.

I’d consider adding in a category list again, but I’m not sure how much people use it as opposed to the search box for finding something?

Tilia

August 8, 2011 #

It’s was only yesterday that I was looking for everything posted on the Nutmeg. There was no easy way to do this other than trough the search box. But even then I still could have searched for example for everything about inspiration or sewalongs. I saw the Tip, tutorials & How-to’s link, but this is only handy for browsing. When you are searching for something specific it’s still handier to have tags and categories to chose from. But that’s probably the librarian in me. :)

Jaq

August 8, 2011 #

Love the new look – so refreshing and well-organized!! Great template and theme.

Gem

August 8, 2011 #

It’s gorgeous! I love the new colour scheme and the stitches around the body of the text.

Debi

August 8, 2011 #

LOVE the new website layout! So lovely!!!

Sarai

August 8, 2011 #

So glad you guys are liking it! I can’t wait to unveil the rest of the website later on. I think it’ll be great.

Renata

August 8, 2011 #

Wow- I’ve only just heard about your patterns. I’m very excited to sew my first Colette pattern. I love the designs that you have on the market, starting back to sew has opened up a new world to me. Although I’ve had a blog for two years, only now have I made any progress. Can wait to read and learn more from you Saria & company:)

Renata

August 8, 2011 #

Oh yeah – Love the clean lines of your blog as well.
Cheers!

Sarah

August 8, 2011 #

Oh, wow, ladies! It looks absolutely heavenly in here! I love the new colour scheme and all the little details, like the buttons. Really excited to see what your big announcement is!

Cat

August 8, 2011 #

Love the site. It’s so so beautiful.
Also, I got my rooibos in the mail today. Thank you! I can’t wait to trace and cut tonight.

Mackenzie

August 8, 2011 #

So pretty! I love the color scheme and little buttons in the comments.

Gail Ann Thompson

August 8, 2011 #

Such a really nice looking blog. I liked it before, but now it’s grand.

Shelly

August 8, 2011 #

Love the fab new look!

Gabriela – Living La Vida Normal

August 8, 2011 #

Will the rss feed still be the same? I’d hate to miss any posts because they don’t come in to my Google Reader. The redesign looks fabulous!

Sarai

August 9, 2011 #

The RSS feed shouldn’t be disrupted. Do let me know if you have problems or don’t see it updating.

Vero

August 8, 2011 #

It looks good, indeed. I like the colors and the feeling of space.

Amy

August 8, 2011 #

Gorgeous new blog! It fits with all that I’ve heard about your sewing patterns. One thing – on the comment two above mine from Gabriela, the triangle that turns the comment into speech bubble is a little high because her name, website, and twitter handle take up two lines. There’s nothing wrong with it, but since everything else seems to be so well designed, I figured I’d mention it. It’s in no way a complaint, so feel free to leave it as is and ignore me! Again, the blog is beautiful! And, I’m enjoying reading along with your Rooibos Sew-Along. I can’t wait for your small-bust adjustment post. I have to admit that fear of doing a small-bust adjustment has prevented me from sewing any of your dresses. Hopefully I’ll feel confident enough to dive in by the end of this week!

Sarai

August 9, 2011 #

Thanks for pointing out the design glitch… Kenn is going to see what he can do to fix it. :)

Curry Made

August 8, 2011 #

Congratulations! The website looks fantastic.

Tas

August 8, 2011 #

Looking spiffy. Love the name!

Tors

August 9, 2011 #

Wow, it looks great, fab job! Can’t wait to go peruse properly!

Claire (aka Seemane)

August 9, 2011 #

Sarai – the new blog site look great! Nice job on the re-design :)

Wendy

August 9, 2011 #

The new layout looks great, and I love the big button on the right with all the tips and tutorials all in one place … genius!

Andrea

August 9, 2011 #

Gorgeous, Dreamy, Inspirational, Serene, PERFECT!!!

Casey

August 9, 2011 #

Very lovely!!! I’m adoring the colors and simple, easy-on-the-eyes layout. Sometimes uncluttered is better, I find especially with sites that offer a lot of visual content. So excited to see this finally unveiled! :)

Simone

August 9, 2011 #

Oh it is soo nice. I really like it! The colours and all… Congratulations!!

lauren

August 9, 2011 #

simple & gorgeous! i love the colors & the layout is very clean and easy to look at :)

Bethany

August 9, 2011 #

The new layout looks really lovely, but (and so sorry to nitpick! I’d have sent this by email or something, but I didn’t find an obvious contact link, so here goes…) there are a few things I’ve noticed that could be improved. The first of them is an actual bug:

1) My comment text was cleared from the form when I clicked away from the form to another window and then returned. (Check the javascript that is clearing your default tips from the fields.. It’s probably just being a little overzealous in clearing the fields.)

2) On a related note: you can use the new html5 :placeholder attribute on the form fields, instead of :value for those placeholder tips. In fact, a quick google search produces this tutorial: http://davidwalsh.name/html5-placeholder that solves both 1&2. (The nice thing about :placeholder is that for the short-attention-spanned like me who forget what they’re supposed to enter in the form field seconds after clicking on it, the :placeholder tip will get filled back into the field if focus leaves and value is still blank. So I can click on the field, immediately forget that I was supposed to put my name there, click the next field, and the placeholder will pop back up reminding me that field number 1 was for my name).

3) I’d recommend changing your layout to display excerpts of the posts on the main page, with full text only once you click through to the individual post page. Sometimes this is a religious issue with people, and you might have chosen to display full posts entirely on purpose, but I think that with tutorial posts in particular, which are very long and full of images, the flow of the blog can get buried and it can be really hard to find what you’re looking for if you are looking for anything other than “whatever is the most recent post on coletterie”.

Ok, that concludes my nitpicking. The design is lovely, and really these amount to minor things, but things that I think could pretty substantially improve the reader’s experience. (I do this for a living, can you tell? :-)

Thanks for all the wonderful things that Colette Patterns makes and does!

Kenn

August 9, 2011 #

Wow, thanks for the detailed feedback Bethany. First, you’re absolutely right about the JavaScript default text thing. I’ll fix that today. I’d love to use HTML5 placeholder text but browser support just isn’t there yet. I’ll look into workarounds for that.

Good point about the post length as well. Our front page can indeed get a little unwieldy. We’ll likely do something about this too.

We know about the name/URL/Twitter names wrapping too. That will also be fixed today.

Thanks again.

Ashley at The Feisty Redhead

August 9, 2011 #

Congrats, gals! This is exciting!

Kerry

August 9, 2011 #

Love the new look site! The design is really cute.

Amanda

August 9, 2011 #

I love the new website and can’t wait for the big announcement tomorrow! I like that the person’s website is listed next to their name, it’s easier to identify the commenter if they have a common name like me :)

Violet

August 10, 2011 #

Very excited that that your book is coming out. Love the new format for blog too.
I have recently been rediscovering joy of sewing after realizing that I don’t really have to settle for ugly RTW for a woman of my mature years!!! I’m surprised by how much I remember about sewing basics from years ago high school instruction but am certainly in a learning curve. Happy to see something inspiring for us beginners
Will be checking your site everyday!
Violet in Michigan