Sew Help Me

Welcome to the "Sew Help Me" Support site. 

Here you will find some guidance on using the app. 

The best way to learn of course, is simply to use it to see what it can do !

Pretty much all of the app should be reasonably self explanatory, I hope :-) 

The best way of testing things, is to try it out and see what happens. You can't do any harm (except perhaps with the delete buttons!!)

Please feel free to feedback bugs, ideas for improvements etc to:-

sewhelpmeapp@gmail.com

If you like the app, please take a minute to provide a review on the App Store.

The purpose of the app is to help you organise and plan your sewing and dressmaking projects. It began as something simple to help my wife with her sewing obsession! It kind of grew from there, and I thought others might find it useful. There is a "Lite" version of the app for you to 'try before you buy", which is limited to 5 projects, 5 fabrics and 5 patterns. Hopefully enough to test it out,  to see if it's something you might find useful.

You can enter all the details and photos of your fabric stash and patterns. Everything is editable and deletable, so don't worry about mistakes!

Use the ideas and projects screens to bring your plans to fruition. Start with the idea, then when you're ready, convert it to a project at the click of a button. When it's complete, take photos of your creations. You can automatically add photos to your Photos library, or just save within the app/iCloud.

The notions shopping list helps you get properly organised with all the supplies you need for a project.

Browse your favourite blogs and websites and link to shopping websites to buy those much needed supplies!

"Tags" provides a highly customisable way of organising your data in any way you choose. For example, if you want to group all your quilting Fat Quarters together for easy searching, then just add a tag (say "FQ"). Then use a custom search with tag set to FQ, and hey presto, all your Fat Quarters are there. The sky's the limit for your customisation.

Record all your Thread collection, and search for just the right one you need to complete that Project you've been meaning to finish!

Notepad allows you to save anything you like as free text. There is an editable template there for saving folk's measurements too! These templates can also be used in the Contacts Notes field as well, if you choose to use your Contacts to store measurements on the Settings page. 

The app is iCloud enabled and will sync across all your devices. If you don't want to use this feature then the app will simply store the data on your phone/pad. But be aware that if you delete the app or lose your device, your data will be lost too, unless you have a separate backup. 

To disable/enable iCloud for SewHelpMe, use your devices main Settings/ AppleID/iCloud screen to toggle off/on there. When off, storage will then be local to your device only. Fine if you have just the one device using the SewHelpMe app and you do backups. By using iCloud, not only will you get multiple device syncing, but data security too.

Use the app settings page to choose your preferred units of measurement. Select whether to save photos to your PhotoLibrary in addition to saving within the app. The app uses your device and personal iCloud account to store your photos, so no need to use the PhotoLibrary if you don't want to. The default position does not use your PhotoLibrary. Settings are unique to each device.

As with all iCloud enabled apps, there is sometimes a short (or long!) delay whilst iCloud updates your app to the most recent data when changing devices. Be Patient! 15+ minutes is not unheard of.  When upgrading from the free trial Lite version, please allow plenty of time for the new 'Full' app to download data from the Lite version that is stored in the cloud. There should be no need to re-enter any data on upgrading. If it fails, try rebooting all the relevant devices.

Searching for what you want should be a breeze! There are one-click filter buttons, a quick-search function, and also a more detailed custom search facility.  You can save custom searches to use repeatedly in the future without having to re-enter the search criteria.

Thanks are due to Pina Messina,  Prince Abid, Rod Long  and Mel for allowing the use of their photos from unsplash.com

Also thanks to my long suffering wife for all the suggestions, feedback and beta testing!

Feedback / suggestions etc. to sewhelpmeapp@gmail.com