How Do Pre-orders Work?
If you have never done a pre-order before, they can seem a little intimidating. Don’t worry, it is really quite easy, it just requires a little patience! I will walk you through the process.
It all starts with Angela (The genius behind Shear Perfection Fabric!) submitting her sample art files to the printer to have “strike off” aka test meters printed. If we are lucky, during this time, Angela will surprise us with some sneak peaks of the fabric in the form of mock-ups. These are great for sewists who have shops as they can use these mock-ups to gage interest! It also gives the rest of us something to look forward to! The strike off meters take a few weeks to arrive. When they do, Angela confirms that the size and colours of the printed fabric are what was asked for. These strike off fabrics are then sent to the Shear Perfection Fabric’s team of gifted sewists (often called Strikers). These Striker Superstars proceed to sew up the beautiful fabric and photograph them to provide everyone with some “sewspiration”.
Leading up to and during the week of the pre-order, Strikers will share their beautiful makes! Then the pre-order opens and it remains open to purchase the fabric for 1 week. You will find a “pre-order” section on the website where you can order the custom prints to your heart’s desire! You will also see at this time, which of the 9 custom bases each fabric will be printed on. You can even make multiple orders throughout the week by using the Cubby option (I’ll describe How Cubbies Work another day and link it HERE!).
Once the pre-order closes, the fabric counts are tallied up and a large order is placed PLUS some additional incase of flaws and for “retail” (a little extra to purchase on the website after all the pre-orders have been shipped).
Now here is where the PATIENCE part comes into play. Pre-orders can take 8-16 weeks to arrive after the final order has been placed and another week or two for the Shear Perfection warehouse staff to get them cut, packed and shipped. That’s a total time of 10-18 weeks before it hits the mail. The reason for such a wide range in estimated arrival time is the chosen shipping method for the bulk fabric (i.e. air vs. sea). If the bulk fabric is shipped by air, it is 4-5 weeks faster than coming by sea. Of course, this costs more, but sometimes Shear Perfection Fabric will elect to do this, if they are pushing a time crunch like for a holiday! Angela had generously done this for the Christmas order of 2020 and the fabrics arrived with plenty of time for all those pretty Christmas gifts! Angela will always state, when the pre-order is listed, if it will be shipped by air or sea.
We refer to the entire process from start to finish as a "Round". When you see R11, that designates that print as part of Round 11.
One important thing to remember though, is that there are no guarantees when it comes to the custom timelines as things can always get hung up at Border Customs for no apparent reason. However, the old adage rings true “Good things come to those who wait!”
As Always, Happy Sewing Friends,
Kimberley W.