by Kelly from SewEndless


I have been asked to share a very useful tool in my sewing room: My white board.

On my white board is a list of my orders. I bought dry erase markers in different colors with magnets on the caps so I can hang them right on the board (if it’s not too full). My orders are in black with potential orders and orders for which I need for information in purple. In green is a “shopping list” at the bottom. It tells me how much I need of my staple fabrics so I don’t have to calculate it every time. When I get really busy I draw lines between orders to represent how many I plan to finish in a week. If there are three green lines, that means I’m 4 weeks out.

When I finish an order I erase it from the top and move everything up if I need to make room. Each order has the name of the item(s), the name of the buyer and any special measurements, colors or notes.

My white board hangs on the wall right next to my cutting desk. From anywhere in my sewing room, I can check to see how many orders I have. If someone asks about how long an order will take, I can look at my white board and give them an approximate time. Or realize I had better pick up the pace.

Next to my white board is a calendar that will soon be the home of my production schedule. Now that I have almost 3 years under my belt, I’m going to sit down and write up a production schedule to give myself deadlines since I seem to work better that way. My schedule will consist of dates for seasonal items. For example, I know that I need to have my children’s school/book bags done by the time school shopping season hits, which is from the first week of July to the second week of August. So I will write down June 30 as my deadline for school bags.