Okay so – confession to open with.

The version of Bloom that exists today, the one with the Roadmap and the Flourish Fridays and the absolutely lovely community of women stitching together every week.. nearly didn’t happen!

Not because of the obvious stuff (money, time, the small human child also requiring my attention). But because of a much quieter, much more annoying voice that kept whispering “who do you think you are to build this?” every time I tried to sit down and actually do it.

(If you’ve ever sat with a big idea and felt that exact voice – hi. Pull up a chair. This one’s for you!)

So today I want to share the actual story of how Bloom came to be. The wobbly bits, the why, and the thing that finally made me stop overthinking and start building.

Grab a cuppa, friend. We’re going behind the curtain. ✨

Before Bloom – what was actually happening

If you’ve found me through Bloom, you might not know that my first business is actually Mindful Mantra Embroidery – my online shop full of patterns, kits and supplies for all levels of stitcher.

Mindful Mantra has been my home base for years. It’s where I learned what people actually struggle with when they’re trying to learn hand embroidery. And, it’s also where I started teaching, slowly, through pattern PDFs and emails and the odd tutorial here and there. On my social media and through my customers, it’s where I built my first proper community of stitchers.

And it taught me something I didn’t expect.

The patterns weren’t the problem. The kits weren’t the problem. People could get the materials. What they couldn’t get was the rest of it – the bit that comes after you’ve stitched a pattern and you’re sitting there thinking “okay.. well, what now?”

I’d get the same questions in my DMs over and over again:

• “What should I learn next?”

• “How do I get better at this stitch?”

• “Is anyone else struggling with [thing]?”

• “Where do I find people who actually take this seriously?”

• “Why are the videos on YouTube so hard to follow and understand?”

And honestly, I didn’t have a brilliant answer. I could send them another pattern. I could point them at a YouTube video (which, let’s face it, rarely actually helps!). But the thing they were actually asking for – a structured path, a teacher who’d answer their questions, company along the way – wasn’t something I could give them through a shop.

So I started thinking about what could..

The first version (that wasn’t quite Bloom yet!)

Before Bloom was Bloom – before it even had a name – there was a Patreon.

I set up a really cheap monthly pattern membership over there, mostly as an experiment. Could I do this? Would people show up? Was there actually a thing here, or was I imagining it?

And the lovely answer was – yes, people did show up. I had a small group of subscribers paying a small amount each month for a new exclusive pattern and a private space for me to share more of the ‘behind the scenes’. And for a little while, it worked. Honestly, those early Patreon members are still some of the kindest humans I’ve ever had the pleasure of stitching alongside!!

But.

The longer I ran it, the more I felt it pulling at the edges. Patreon could deliver a pattern to subscribers. But what it couldn’t do was the rest of the things I wanted to offer – the structured progression, the community space where members could actually talk to each other, the live moments where I could see what they were working on, the proper sense of we’re all doing this together.

I’d give people the pattern.. and then they’d disappear off into the void to stitch it alone. Which is exactly what I’d been trying to fix.

So that’s when I started thinking bigger. More content. More connection. A proper space where members could find each other, not just me.

The idea that wouldn’t leave me alone

The first time I sketched out what would eventually become Bloom, I wasn’t working from home in a lovely studio. I was at my desk in the office of my miserable corporate job, scribbling on note paper between meetings, because I was still in full-time employment at the time.

(There’s something quite funny about planning a slow, mindful stitching community on the back of a work notepad while you’re meant to be doing actual work. Don’t tell my old boss!)

The sketch was messy.. But the shape was there:

• A structured path so people knew what to learn and in what order
• A library of patterns they could actually practise with, not just collect
• Live Calls where they could hold up their hoop and I could see what was going wrong
• A proper community of stitchers who took the craft seriously – but warmly, without ego
• A rhythm that fit real life – not binge-able, not overwhelming, just a steady weekly cadence that members could work through at their own pace and on their own schedule.

I looked at the sketch and thought: yes. That’s the thing.

And then immediately afterwards I thought: “I am absolutely not the person to build this” 🥲

The wobble (the bit nobody ever talks about)

Here’s the vulnerable bit I don’t talk about enough.

I went full-time self-employed in January 2022 – and Bloom didn’t actually go live until July 2023. That’s eighteen months of sitting on the idea while I did literally everything else to avoid building it.

I tidied, I redesigned bits of the MME website, I started pattern collections. I planned, I re-planned and un-planned (and re-planned again).

The voice in my head kept up a steady commentary:

• “There are already memberships out there.”

• “You’re not technical enough.”

• “What if people join and then leave?”

• “Who do you think you are?”

• And the most uncomfortable one – “What if you build it and nobody comes?”

(I know. I know. Very Field of Dreams of me!)

What finally got me unstuck wasn’t a productivity hack or a mastermind weekend or some big mindset shift. It was much smaller than that.

I was answering yet another DM from someone asking “where do I go if I want to learn more than the basics?”, and I caught myself in the middle of typing out my fifth essentially-identical reply that month. And I thought – this person doesn’t need another DM from me. They need somewhere proper to go.

And if I didn’t build that somewhere, they were going to keep stitching alone, googling things at 10pm, joining and leaving courses, never quite landing.

That’s what got me to open the laptop. Not ambition. Not strategy. Just being a bit annoyed on behalf of every stitcher who’d asked me that question!

Building the messy first version of Bloom Embroidery Academy

The first proper version of Bloom – the one that opened its doors in July 2023 – was rough, friend. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

It was a single sales page (that I built myself in an afternoon), a handful of patterns, a private community on a platform I quickly outgrew, and a lot of enthusiasm held together with duct tape.

But here’s the thing – the women who joined that first cohort didn’t care that it was rough. They cared that they finally had somewhere to learn, somewhere to ask, and someone to ask. They cared that they weren’t stitching alone anymore!

And here’s the bit that genuinely makes me well up – a handful of those original Bloomies are still with me today. Years and years later. Stitching alongside me through every Roadmap update, every Flourish Friday, every monthly challenge. That’s not something I take lightly, not for a second 🥹

They saw the rough first version of Bloom and stayed. They’re the reason the version of Bloom that exists today exists at all.

And then they started doing the thing I hadn’t dared to hope for.

Their stitching got better. Neater. And they got more confident, too.

Their tension settled. Their satin stitch went from bumpy to smooth and shiny. They finished projects they’d had sitting in drawers for two years. They started saying “I’m an embroiderer” instead of “I dabble in embroidery, I’m not really very good”.

That bit – the identity shift – was when I knew Bloom was going to be a forever thing for me.

What Bloom Embroidery Academy looks like now

The version of Bloom that exists today is properly built, and is a fully functioning website + community. We’ve got the Roadmap (a clear five-stage path from Newbie to Seed to Budding to Blooming to Expert), Flourish Friday pattern releases every week, monthly stitchalongs where we get the sense of all working on a project together, monthly challenges to keep things playful + creative, and a community on Circle that is genuinely the kindest corner of the embroidery internet.

But honestly? The bones haven’t changed since that notepad sketch in the office!

There’s a structured path. Proper ways and methods to practise. Real feedback when it’s asked for. Good company of like-minded women.

That’s still what Bloom is. Everything we’ve built since is just deeper, prettier, more polished versions of those four things!

And the women inside – our ‘Bloomies’ – they’re the reason I show up every Monday morning excited to do this. They’re funny, generous, curious, brave, and they hold each other up in ways I genuinely couldn’t have engineered. That bit was a gift.

Why I’m telling you this now

Because if you’ve ever sat with an idea and thought “who am I to build this?”, I want you to know – that voice doesn’t go away. You just learn to build alongside it.

And also because if you’re new here, I want you to know what kind of place Bloom actually is. It’s a slow-built, properly-tended community of women who took their stitching seriously enough to give it real time and real space – not a content library you binge and abandon. I’m so proud of it I could honestly cry about it 🥹

If you happen to be a little bit more curious about what you can find inside Bloom, then you’ll definitely want to take a look at this!

Before you go..

If reading this has felt a bit like reading your own story – the wondering, the wobble, the “what do I learn next?” question that nobody’s quite answered yet – then Bloom might genuinely be where you need to be.

There’s no big pitch here. Just an open invitation. The Roadmap’s waiting, Flourish Friday’s coming up this week, and there’s a truly lovely community of women on the other side who’d absolutely welcome you in with open arms!

You can have a peek at Bloom Embroidery Academy here whenever you fancy it. The invite is always open! 🌸

Til next time, friend!

Sophie xx