I’m closing down Modern Tally at the end of this year.
My first craft show was almost exactly 9 years ago, a tiny little free thing at a coffee shop five minutes away. I had about fifteen different products on the table, none of which are what I sell now—it was a spaghetti-on-the-wall kind of approach. I made four sales, for a total of exactly $100.
Last month was my fifth or sixth Art on the Avenue. I had hundreds of sales and made an amount of money that 2015 me would be astonished by. (2024 me is a little astonished too, to be honest.) I had so many customers come up to me and tell me how much they loved the bookmarks they bought last year, how much their friend loved the kindle case they gave her, how they came to the show specifically looking for me. One woman told me she had an early kindle case of mine, from before I changed the name to Modern Tally, and it still looked perfect. (That’s at least 6 years ago!)
It was, honestly, a perfect day. (Except for the part where my tent broke during set up, but even that was beautiful in its own way, because of how immediately I ran into a market friend who just happened to have an extra.)
All day I was fighting back tears because I knew it was my last Art on the Avenue.
I had been struggling to make this decision. It’s hard to walk away from something like this, something I built from the ground up, something at this point so deeply connected to my sense of identity.
There are so many plans I had for Modern Tally that I wasn’t able to make happen. Some small, some big, and I have constantly been frustrated that I don’t have the money/time/bodies/all of the above to do the things I want to do. When I look at my plans versus what I’ve actually done, it’s hard not to feel a bit inadequate, like I never quite made this into what I had hoped it would be. Closing it down felt like an admission of failure.
But the people who said such kind things to me a few weeks ago at Art on the Avenue made me realize that I have built something to be proud of. And I was able to see this change of plans not as a failure, but as the natural end of something that I loved, something I made, something I’m so proud of, but something that I am ready to move on from.
It’s been nine years of sewing wherever I could squeeze in time around the nap and preschool schedules of two small kids—often very late at night. Nine years of shoulder pain from being hunched over my machine all day long. Nine years of cheering every time my phone dinged with a new sale. Nine years of stressing over what to post on social media, or how long it’s been since I wrote a newsletter. Nine years of perfecting my zipper technique (ok that happened early, but boy, I could probably sew one with my eyes closed at this point). Nine years of tweaking my show displays, of agonizing over product decisions, over hustling so hard every November and December that I find it hard to enjoy the holidays with my family.
Running a business takes a lot of energy and time, and right now, there are other places in my life I want to be spending that energy and time. I am so proud of what I’ve built, and so grateful to all of you who have supported me along the way.
So what now?
Great question. I still have inventory on hand, and I will continue to sell through that as normal, but I will not be restocking anything. I have some odds and ends that have never made it to the website, so I will photograph those and get them up. At some point I'm sure everything will go on clearance, and of course I'll let you know when that happens. I'm winging this a little bit, thanks for hanging with me while I figure it out.
xoxo Leah
