The Amazing True Story Behind The Sewing Revolution:

Kym Graham first met Ann Duncan when she purchased a machine from her sewing centre. At the time, neither imagined the ensuing years would see them re-unite to become one of the most innovative sewing teams in the world.

Ann Duncan spent her teenage years working in a local fabric shop, after which she moved on to selling sewing machines before carving out a career as a respected demonstrator and sewing centre owner on Australia's Gold Coast.

Kym Graham's path to sewing and creative machine embroidery has been a little less direct. While Kym remembers being taught to sew by her mother, grandmother and aunty, all of whom were immaculate sewers, she actually pursued a scientific career, completing a degree with a double major and becoming a detective in the police force.

When Kym visited Ann's sewing centre to purchase a machine, the pair just clicked and struck up an immediate friendship. At that stage Kym lived several thousand kilometers away from where Ann was based, but a bond developed over the next few years that resulted in Kym coming to work for Ann once she retired from the police force.

Both Ann and Kym contain an amazing passion for creativity. Add to this mix, the fantastic capabilities of modern embroidery machines and you have an innovative duo that work tirelessly together, coming up with new ideas and experimenting to gain the most out of their machines.

Which brings us to the most exciting development in the story of The Sewing Revolution.

A few years ago, a customer who had received a free, circular sewing attachment with the purchase of a sewing machine returned to Ann and Kym, proclaiming that 'this piece of metal' as she called it, was useless!

From their experience in the sewing industry, Ann and Kym recognised this to be a common frustration among sewers so they set about trying to find an easy way to locate the centre point of circles and arcs when circular sewing.

Necessity is the mother of all invention, and as a pair of lateral thinkers and problem solvers, Ann and Kym put their heads together and came up with The Sewing Revolution.

"First we took a compass and piece of Vilene and started drawing circles. Next, we went to a plastics manufacturer and had a round circle made with 45 degree angles and holes made in it," Ann explains. "After that was made, we discovered the possibilities of positioning embroidery. Following even more research and testing we had a 13" inch wheel prototype made with 45 degree and 60 degree lines so that it could be used by patchworkers."

After the first prototypes were developed, they discovered that you could create most shapes just by marking and joining dots!

It has been exciting and intense since 2001, when Ann and Kym began developing their ideas to where they stand to day - holding an international patent with The Sewing Revolution stimulating strong global interest.

They used The Sewing Revolution for so long before it was released to the public - to make sure it worked. "We worked at home every night, developing our ideas and testing out designs over the phone," Ann recalls.

The next step was to get a Patent to protect their design. This expensive process took 14 months to conquer. They saved their lunch money and stayed away from fabric shops to save up enough pennies for a provisional patent.

"In the beginning, the patent lawyer wasn't totally convinced by our idea, remarking 'it's only a piece of plastic.'
Now he is calling us up and telling us what we should be doing."

Developing a new product and following it through patenting, manufacturing, marketing and distribution has been an enormous task, but Ann and Kym have managed to take on all this whilst still running two popular sewing centers, Lacey's Sewing Centre and Janome Gold Coast ( Australia ).

The Sewing Revolution developed by Ann and Kym.

For this wonderful journey to have been possible, Ann and Kym acknowledge that their success has been possible due to the generous support network of family and friends, accompanied of course by their own passion and commitment to sewing, embroidery and creativity.

"The most important thing in our relationship is we laugh. We see the funny side to most things and have a great time together," Kym reveals.