Fantastic and Frustrating

Wow! How does one start to process 344,000 views of our online challenge? We’re still reeling from the phenomenal response this year, and would once again, like to extend our gratitude for the 5,344 posts you made to #SeptTextileLove24, to the more than 3,600 of you who took the time to make 16,485 interactions with us and the many, many more interactions between all you textile enthusiasts, sharing your textiles and the stories behind them for this #STL24. THANK YOU!

A special mention goes to everyone who made it to the end of the challenge! We know it’s hard to keep up the pace – well done!

It is an overwhelmingly popular experience for participants and organisers but as the experience has grown it has brought up one or two challenges of its own from Instagram.

What you had to say about #STL24

We’ve had some amazing feedback from participants, which makes us feel that the effort was worth it.

I’ve really benefitted from these daily prompts, questions and the less self conscious sharing of my work, that these daily prompts have instigated, so if anyone wants to keep sending me daily or weekly prompts please send away!

@hollyberry_woven textiles

I’ve so enjoyed the discipline of committing words to each day’s prompt and I’ve loved getting better acquainted with the work from both friends I know and many whom I don’t…
I can’t bring myself to choose any favourites as I’m just so blown away by the breadth and depth of our communal love of textiles, art and craft…thank you for all the inspiration 🙏

@hedgerow_couture

I had so much fun participating in your #septtextilelove24 challenge! It really opened my eyes up to all the possibilities!

@sewdarnedknotty

It gave me the kick start I needed to start making again. And it was lovely being inspired by others responses to the prompts too 🙌❤️🙌

@clairemalleyart

It was my first year, an absolute pleasure. Made me learn alot about myself and where I want to go. 💕

@hawley.lisa

Really enjoyed the prompts as a new way to think about daily practice.

@al_x_images

What was different this year?

Thank you to everyone who tagged and mentioned @seam_collective – it made it much easier to find posts and choose our favourite three each day. However, when it wasn’t our turn to choose we realised how hard it was to find everyone’s posts for the day so, as individuals, we could engage with old friends and new.

We also noticed how comfortable many of you are now making reels as your responses to the prompts – we really appreciate the effort and thought that goes into every one of your posts.

Instagram Stories

Thank you to everyone who took the time to make their #STL posts into Instagram stories and shared them will us, so we in turn could share them all with you. It was a great way of finding the posts for that day’s prompt!

But, with stories it is easy to miss out on some great captions – what we love about #STL is the fantastic images of textiles but also your thoughtful captions and the nuances on how you interpret a prompt – is it too much to want to see both easily?

Next Year – New Hashtags

We are thinking of introducing new hashtags next year so it is much easier to find everyone who posts as part of #STL. We at seam were worried that we were missing people but the Instagram algorithm is making it harder to find who have posted on a given day…

Our suggestion for 2025 is if everyone could use daily hashtags, #STL25Day1, #STL25Day2 etc – where STL is short for Sept Textile Love, as well as our usual hashtags #SeptTextileLove and #SeptTextileLove25.

Would that be easy for you to remember or are we making it too complicated?

Don’t forget to check out the wonderful collective archive of inspiration from all the participants at #SeptTextileLove, #SeptTextileLove24 and previous years, and keep us in the loop with your Instagram posts. We’ll try our best to engage with our vast textile community when we can!

Angie and Penny