At Maternity Sewing, we consider ourselves a part of a community and we want to amplify the voices of all of those in our community – pregnant, nursing, or postpartum. As part of our community, we’d love to have you write a guest blog post! We want to share your stories, your expertise, your sewing projects. To pitch us a post, send us an email, letting us know who you are and what kind of post you’d like to write.
Guest Post Options
We are currently accepting a wide variety of guest posts. Detailed below are a few of the categories of posts and their requirements. If what you want to share doesn’t fit in these categories, just let us know – we welcome your pitch. Please note that any post on Maternity Sewing must be written exclusively for Maternity Sewing – search engines will penalize us if the same text is found elsewhere. However, we encourage you to link back to your own blog content in any guest post you write.
– Maternity Style or Postpartum Style
Our Maternity Style or Postpartum Style series is about showing off garments you’ve sewn that help you to feel comfortable and confident in your pregnant, nursing, or postpartum body.
Examples:
Roscoe Blouse by Lisa
Waterfall Raglan Top by Elizabeth
Miss Frankie Mae by Elisabeth
Requirements:
We will provide a pattern from our shop for you to sew. We ask that you sew it and write a blog post about it (400-600 words, including 5-7 photos) in 1 month. Please include the “Specs” section listed below. Further suggestions for what you can include in your post: Why did you choose this pattern? What fabric did you use (is it appropriate, a good choice)? Did you make any adjustments/would you make them next time? Is the style familiar or new to you? How does it function for pregnancy/nursing/postpartum?
Specs:
- Pattern: [PATTERN NAME + DESIGNER]
- View & Size: [VIEW + SIZE]
- Adjustments: [state if they are ones you always make, or just for this pattern]
- Fabric: [FABRIC USED]
- Pictured at [WEEKS] pregnant (or [WEEKS/MONTHS/YEARS] postpartum) (optional)
– Sewing Self-Confidence
Our Sewing Self-Confidence series is about sharing personal stories. Through pregnancy and postpartum our bodies go through massive changes in size and shape, unfamiliar redistributions of weight, and are constantly changing. These changes can be disorienting and can cause even the most self-confident of women to feel alien in her body. Hormonal surges, sleep deprivation, and pregnancy or postpartum mood disorders can make your mind feel alien too. We are using this series to share women’s experiences of some of the harder parts of pregnancy and postpartum and how sewing has helped them through.
Examples in this series:
How Sewing Helped Me Prepare for Motherhood: Jordan’s Story
Choosing Not to Bounce Back after Pregnancy: Jodi’s Story
Sewing Self-Confidence after Pregnancy: Rebecca’s Story
Requirements:
Share your story in a blog post of any length and include 1-7 photos. We prefer if it ties back to sewing somehow.
– Tutorial
Our Tutorial series is about helping other pregnant, nursing, and postpartum sewists.
Examples in this series:
How to Add Fabric to the Side of a Shirt
How to Sew a Waistband Extender for Jeans
How to Sew Nursing Pads
Requirements:
Clearly explain in a step-by-step manner how to do something. Readers must be able to follow the entire tutorial in the post on our site, though you are welcome to link to your site for additional inspiration or support (such as “see my blog for more modeled photos of the end result” or “see my blog for a related tutorial you might also want to follow.” If your tutorial is geared to a specific sewing pattern, it must be one that we currently carry in our shop (such as how to make this maternity pattern nursing friendly).
Creating an Account
After you’ve emailed with us about writing a guest post, we’ll create a Contributor account for you on Maternity Sewing. You’ll get an email from our website with a link that allows you to login. After you log in, the first thing you need to do is set up your account. In the sidebar, select “Profile”.
Every blog post that is published on Maternity Sewing has an author profile box at the bottom, as shown below.
You can select the name that will show under “Display name publicly as” – the options are created automatically using combinations of what you enter into First Name, Last Name, and Nickname. You are welcome to use your real name, a pseudonym, or a nickname – whatever you’re comfortable with. If you have a website, you can enter it under Website to have it display in your author profile box. Your email will not be shown – it is saved by the system so that you can access your account if you forget your password.
We love it if you write a super short bit about yourself (1-3 sentences) to show in the author profile box as well. It’s always fun for readers to get a glimpse of the real human behind any blog post!
We’d also love to have a photo to show in the author profile box as well. It can be a photo of you, an avatar, your website logo, or any sort of photo or illustration that you hold the copyright to. We need to upload it to your account for you, so please email a photo to us (or a link where we can find the photo you’d like to use from your own website).
If you want to have your author profile box show links to any of your social media accounts you can enter them under Social Media Links.
You don’t need to edit or enter any of the other information (like Personal Options, SEO Settings, Customer Billing Address or Customer Shipping Address). When you’re all done, make sure you click the “Update User” button at the bottom of the screen to save your information.
Writing the Blog Post
You’re welcome to write your post as a .doc and and email it to us to upload under your name. Alternatively, you can write and edit your post directly on our website.
When you’re ready to write a blog post, in the sidebar click Posts => Add New or on the Posts => All Posts page you can click “Add New”. If you have saved a blog post draft and want to continue to edit it, you can find it on Posts => All Posts by clicking “Mine”.
When you’re on your new blog post page, 1. Add a title, 2. Write your blog post content, and 3. Click “Submit for Review” to let us know that the post is ready to be published. If you want to return to your post and work on it later, click the “Save Draft” button (above “Submit for Review”) before navigating away from the page.
You can write your post in the visual editor or in the html editor by toggling between the “Visual” and “Text” tabs right above the blog post text area. If you want to see a preview of what your post will look like when published, click on the “Preview” button above the “Submit for Review” button.
The one thing you can’t do as a blog contributor is add images to your post. We ask that all blog posts contain 1-5 images to make them visually appealing. We prefer images to be 1000px wide though we can resize them for you if you are unable. You can email us images, send us a Dropbox download link, or give us direct image download links if you already have them posted somewhere else online (like on your own blog). If you have specific places in your post that you would like for us to insert the images, note that in your blog post like [INSERT SPECIFIC IMAGE HERE].
Sharing Your Blog Post
Once your blog post is live we’d love it if you would help us shout it from the rooftops! You’re welcome to share snippets of it wherever and whenever you’d like. We kindly ask that you don’t re-post the whole blog post verbatim anywhere else because it will make search engines dislike us.