Starting scrappy

Letting go of polished beginnings

Happy new year. I hope you are finding pockets of rest and ease in this strange in-between time, where the calendar has rolled over but our bodies are still catching up.

As the year begins, I’ve been thinking about intentions. Not resolutions in the shiny, aspirational sense, but quieter intentions. The kind that can sit alongside real life. For the first time in a long time, these intentions feel achievable, mostly because I’m not asking myself to become a different person in order to meet them.

I’ve decided that my intention for 2026 is to get scrappy.

To lean into the honest, the raw, the unpolished. To stop waiting for clarity, energy, confidence or certainty to arrive before I begin. To see what happens when I work with what’s already here, rather than fighting against it.

Last year taught me a lot about what it means to freefall publicly. And yes, “publicly” is a stretch, given this Substack lands in about 500 inboxes, but you know what I mean… I still felt exposed and vulnerable. Like letting people see me mid-thought, mid-question, mid-wobble.

There were plenty of moments when it felt tempting to handle my business and life existential crisis quietly, behind closed doors. To hit rock bottom in private. To retreat, regroup, and only re-emerge once I had a neat solution or a clever pivot to reveal. That approach would have felt safer, for sure. More controlled. Maybe even more respectable.

But I also knew what it would cost me.

I knew how disconnected I would feel. How heavy it would be to perform steadiness when I didn’t feel it. How much energy it takes to hold things together when they’re actually asking to be pulled apart and re-examined. Even if I managed to fake it for a while, I knew the toll it would take in the long run and I just didn’t have it in me.

What I re-learned in 2025 is that there is something deeply liberating about saying, out loud, “I am struggling with this.” Something shifts when you stop trying to package uncertainty into something palatable and just let it exist as it is. It invites honesty and connection. It invites others to meet you where you actually are, not where you think you should be.

Since launching Beyond the Folds, I’ve connected with my community in a very different way to how I had before. Through this project, the conversation has centred more around motherhood, identity, energy, and the ongoing negotiation between work, care, creativity and relationships. It’s felt less like broadcasting and more like sitting in a circle together, comparing notes.

Having people see me as I am, has been a relief. A genuine exhale. And instead of turning away, uncomfortable with the vulnerability, so many of you have leaned in and said, “I see you. I’m here too. I’d like to come along for this ride.”

Another unexpected thing about doing this work out in the open is that it has created a conversation, not just a monologue. Instead of me trying to guess, behind the scenes, what our community might want or need next, it’s become a two-way street. We’re exploring these questions together.

Our needs are changing. Our capacities are changing. Which means our making practices are changing too. It’s only natural.

As I’ve grown closer in age and lifestyle to my general customer demographic, I’ve noticed something interesting happen. The distance between “me” and “my customer” has disintegrated. When I was in my mid-twenties and just starting out, I knew very clearly that my customer was not me. She was older, more likely to have children, often curvier. She was living a life I hadn’t yet experienced.

I designed for her with care and intention, but it’s very different to becoming her.

Now, with a changing body, I understand on a visceral level why grading between sizes matters. Why it’s exhausting to feel like your measurements aren’t stable, that they might shift again next month. I understand the mental load of dressing a body that’s in flux. The frustration of garments that once worked beautifully and suddenly don’t. The need for clothes that can stretch, adjust, soften and accommodate a bra, breastfeeding, or whatever might come next.

This Substack, and the scrappy way it has come together, has made something very clear to me. There is real value in not waiting for perfection. In sharing ideas while they’re still forming. In letting things be useful rather than impressive. It means accepting that some things might miss the mark, or land with less impact than if I’d waited until I had more time, more clarity, more certainty. But that trade-off feels worth it. I’d rather create something that’s alive and sustainable than something technically perfect that costs me more than I can give.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot in relation to making too.

When I lean into the scrappy, I enjoy the process more. I’m kinder to myself. I take mistakes less personally. A wobbly seam can be fixed. Unpicking becomes part of the rhythm rather than a sign I’ve done something wrong. Sometimes it even becomes an excuse to sit back on the couch, snips in hand, watching something trashy while I go back a few steps.

Scrappy making acknowledges that creativity doesn’t happen in a straight line. That there are seasons of energy and seasons of rest. Bursts of momentum followed by plateaus. Times when ideas flow easily, and times when simply showing up feels like enough.

For a long time, I think I resisted rest. Or at least treated it as something to be earned. Something that could only happen once the work was done, the ideas resolved, the to-do list cleared. But motherhood, burnout, and a few well-timed reckonings have taught me otherwise. Rest isn’t a reward. It’s part of the cycle. Just as necessary as the making itself.

What shifted in 2025 is that I learning to honour that rhythm more honestly. Letting projects breathe. Allowing ideas to be half-formed. Trusting that stepping back doesn’t mean I’ve given up, it often means I’m making space for something new to emerge.

This way of working, and making, and sharing, is what has quietly been taking shape behind the scenes over the last few months. This month, I’ll be inviting you into a new space called Making, Again. It’s not a big reinvention or a dramatic pivot. It’s more like a continuation of this conversation. A gentle container for exploring creativity through small experiments, reflection, and play, without the pressure to be productive or polished.

More on that soon.

For now, I’m holding onto this intention to get scrappy. To trust the cycles. To let making and resting coexist. To keep showing up as I am, not as I think I should be.

If you’re finding your way back to your own creative practice this year, I hope you can do the same. Start where you are. Use what you have. Let it be imperfect. Let it be enough.

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