What to Do with Sewing Videos After You Save Them

You’ve just seen a really cool way to sew a placket onto a T-shirt while scrolling through Facebook.

You watch the video all the way through and think “I’ll save that for later”, so you click on the Save Post link, and then you continue getting that dopamine hit as you keep scrolling, and scrolling, and scrolling.

Fast forward a few weeks, a few months, or even a year, and you are at your sewing machine, about to sew a placket onto a T-shirt. You read through the pattern instructions, and you don’t quite understand what they want you to do. Or it sounds way too complicated.

Then you think back to that video you remember from ages ago that you saw somewhere – was it Facebook? YouTube? An online course? A web page? You go on the hunt.

You look through your Facebook saved posts, YouTube history or watch later list, your browser bookmarks and even tried a Google search. But it’s nowhere to be found.

It’s not the end of the world, although it can feel like it.

So you go and watch a few videos on how to sew that placket. But none of them is quite right. Before you know it, an hour has gone by, or maybe even two, and you haven’t even started sewing your placket.

It’s time to come up with a better system.

Create a “Source of Truth”

A “Source of Truth” is a term used to describe having all related information in one place. So when it’s time to look up something, you know exactly where to look. A time saver, and a sanity saver.

It can be either in a physical or a digital form, such as:

• • a physical folder

• • a physical book you’ve written instructions in

• • a folder on your laptop

• • or stored online in Dropbox, iCloud or Google Drive

Digital is the preferred format as it’s accessible wherever you are.

Going digital doesn’t remove the need for physical references, like samples of sewing techniques. All you need to do in your digital document is write a short description of the physical location of the sample, such as “Sample is in Sewing Techniques binder on the top shelf of the bookcase in the sewing room”.

Regularly Review Your Saved Videos

Keep saving posts on Facebook and bookmarking YouTube videos and websites – so you can still enjoy the content and mark it as something to deal with later.

However, don’t let that “later” be never.

Regularly go through what you’ve saved – that could be weekly, fortnightly or monthly. Try not to leave it any longer than a month, or else you’ll forget about it.

ACTION STEP: Create a recurring calendar reminder called “Check my Saved Sewing Instructions”. This reminder should include links to where you should look for your saved items.

Add Them to Your “Source of Truth” (or not)

When it’s time to go through what you’ve saved, decide if you want to:

1. 1. Delete it, or

1. 1. Add it to your “Source of Truth”

Deleting It

Deleting it and taking no further action is an appropriate response. You could have found a better sewing technique, or you may have no idea why you saved it in the first place.

It’s not worth spending time saving details of a sewing technique that you won’t ever use. Your time is precious, and it’s best spent on the important things.

Adding It to Your “Source of Truth”

If it’s a sewing technique that you know you’ll use someday, then add it to your “Source of Truth”.

This could be as simple as creating a new Word Document on your laptop, giving it an appropriate name and then pasting in the link, along with the name of the creator of the video.

But beware of the dreaded link rot, when a link doesn’t work anymore. It happens a lot, and it’s really frustrating.

That’s why I recommend creating your own set of instructions using your own words, not those used in the video. You will understand them better, and if not, then you’ll need to rewrite them until they do become clear.

You can take screenshots from a video to insert into your document to better explain the instructions, but they should only be used for your own reference. Sharing screenshots of videos that you didn’t create will lead to copyright issues.

Ideally, when you try out the sewing technique for the first time, take your own photos of each step and use them instead of the original screenshots. You could even create your own video.

Anything you do create, though, should be for your eyes only.

Want help getting started writing your own sewing instructions? Access the Sewing Instructions template below.