Jordan mans the shipping desk from the shiny new Sublime Stitching office
(That amazing quilt was a gift from the female work collective in India who makes some of my fair-trade textiles!)

For the first time in almost ten years, Sublime Stitching has moved out of my home into its first official office! What? You didn't know that Sublime Stitching has been run out of my house this whole time? Oh yes, dear stitchers, it most certainly has. How many employees? Currently: 2 (Jordan and an uber-helpful new gal named Courtney).

I always like to tell people that Sublime Stitching began at my kitchen table, moved to my desk, into a front bedroom, out into the hallway and then into my finished garage. "Garage" is kind of embarrassing though. I mean, it's not like I came to work by using a garage-door opener. In fact, it's rather cute in there. See? But a little cramped. There was no room for me!

Because my Sublime Stitching home office has been filled with a rotating cast of part-time helper-outers over the years (JessicaImanStephanieMary1Jessica2CarolElizabethJessica3Mary2 -to name a few), there wasn't much room for me in my own home. So, I continued to work from the other side of the house in the very same extra bedroom/tv room/embroidering corner for the last (count 'em) ten years. And it was a little bit cramped in there, too. Not very conducive to relaxing once "work" was "over". (When you work from home, work is never really "over".) Knock, knock....

My extra bedroom office / stitching / relaxing (ha) / tv room. Sublime Stitching HQ since 2001.

Any time someone would say to me at a market: "I love you guys!" or "I thought you were a big company!" I'd marvel inwardly, knowing it's been me, here at home, cranking out as much new embroidery anything and everything I could muster with any kind of help I could get. I'd equally marvel at the name and attention that my little business had earned along with the assumption that I was a "big company". Nope- ain't nobody here but us chickens, working our tailfeathers off.

Kits are assembled right here by us...

...and shipped directly from my front door (I have a really nice mailman).
But now they ship from....

Ta daa! It's (passibly) cute, right? You weren't expecting a suite in an industrial park with cubicles, were you? A skyscraper? A corporate office overlooking a courtyard with a fountain? Actually this is just a tiny rental tucked behind a bungalow house here in Austin. (I don't plan on opening it to the public, in case you were wondering. If it were bigger, maybe. It's pretty tiny and boxes are still beng unpacked.) Think of it as Sublime Stitching's distribution center. We are here filling orders and playing our favorite songs for each other on iTunes. Having an off-site office to go to is really a big change for me, and I like it! Mornings: office stuff, emails, inventory, bills, blogging. Afternoon: I go home (a short trip down the road) to do design work in my newly emptied "garage" studio and leave Jordan in charge. 

How's that for a home-based business? Thank you for being so supportive of my micro-company! Maybe one day I'll get from micro to macro. One day... 

✓ Challenged by managing your own home-based office?
You might enjoy my column "Crafting a Business: Dare to take time off"

♥ To celebrate my new office I am gonna have a weekend SALE for you! Enter OFFICEPARTY at checkout for 10% OFF ♥ until 2/29