The very first post ...

Hi, and welcome to the fabrication.co.nz blog!

Here you'll find regular updates on what's happening in the world of fabrication.co.nz, like new stock just in, or stock arriving soon, current projects, and maybe even a few how-to lessons.

But, for this first blog I thought I'd tell you a bit about myself, and how fabrication.co.nz came about. So, here's a run down on me...

My name is Annie and I'm 30 years old and I'm married to Greg (32, a geologist and a wonderful husband and dad) and we have one son, Thomas who's 14 months old. We all live in a little 2 bedroom house in Christchurch that needs a lot of work but comes with lots of potential and a huge section, just perfect for little boys to run around in and to grow lots of veges.

After growing up in Ashburton and then going on to Otago Uni to study English and Economics, Greg and I moved to Wellington where I worked for the Treasury as a policy analyst for about 4 years. It was a great job and Wellington was such a fun place to live in our 20s, but when we decided it was time to think about a family we couldn't resist the temptation to move back to the South Island to be closer to our families and enjoy the slower pace of life down here. So far it has been a great decision.

Since having Thomas life has changed a bit. For a start, I'm a mum now and that really has changed the way I view the world. The smaller things mean more, and for me I discovered that I have a strong (but previously largely repressed) creative side that needs indulging. I've always been more of a numbers girl (I still work 3 days a week at Deloitte in their Corporate Finance team) but the more creative things I worked on the more I realised I needed to keep on creating. So, I decided that I needed a way to balance these two sides of me. And, when I was constantly struggling to find the kind of fabrics that I wanted to indulge my love of sewing the way to create that balance, fabrication.co.nz, was born. Now I get to work with gorgeous fabrics all day, plus I have the admin side of running a business to keep my brain busy. So far, it's been perfect (although it does mean a lot of late nights!).

I decided on the name fabrication for my business for a couple of reasons, but mainly because I love the way it incorporates the word fabric with the act of creating something out of that fabric. For me, one of the most exciting parts of buying a new piece of fabric is dreaming of all the hundreds of uses that it could be put to (but if you're like me, finding the time to actually turn the material into something is the hard bit, and so you end up with a box or a room or a house full of fabric, of possibility really). It's this idea that I wanted to capture with the name of my business, and I hope I've done that.

Well, there's lots more I could tell you, but this will have to do for now. Thanks for reading my first blog - I hope you've enjoyed getting to know me and that you'll visit again in the future.