Welcome to this semi-"news article", a writeup by Lemuria of certain events he finds interesting in the sewing community, especially when they become relevant to his clothing taxonomy research.

The Australian sewist Megan Nielsen is leaving Instagram with a bang, and inviting sewist folk (with two dollars to spare), to join her on her new app, Sewcial. This July 8, 2026, Nielsen made a 12-image Instagram post where she attempted to defend herself from the barrage of online Internet vitriol directed at her.

Nielsen is facing criticism for her donations to World Vision Australia, itself getting the heat for the actions of its fellow American chapter, which was involved in a major court case, Aubry McMahon v. World Vision, Inc., where World Vision USA rescinded a job offer they made to McMahon after learning she was in a same-sex marriage. In her post, Nielsen emphasized that World Vision USA and World Vision Australia were distinct.

Sewcial bills itself as having "no hidden agenda" and being "neutral", moves being criticized by many, especially on r/craftsnark (1, 2). There, Anneke Caramin wrote that it was "tone deaf" to say that one was simultaneously Christian and politically neutral. When Elie Wiesel accepted the Nobel Prize in 1986, he said, "neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim". In stark contrast, one of Sewcial's taglines goes, "No Ads, No Algorithms, No Agenda, Just Sewing."

Sewcial is also getting flak for its monthly membership fee of US$1.99. This fee, at least in the eyes of clothing taxonomists like Lemuria, is the biggest concern. Clothing taxonomy, or sartorial systematics as Lemuria's Reddit username says, like any other scientific discipline, is no stranger to the paywall. Yet, Lemuria, and his Taxonomy Board (which is simply him, following the time-honored tradition of the royal we), is not impressed.

In his words, "we can pay, but our readers can't. Nielsen's building another walled garden, enticing makers to come on in and post there, and only there, and with every sewist that falls in, more data becomes inaccessible. We can truly bring back the 2010s, but for that, we must return to blogging."

On that front, Lemuria has expressed his preference for Bluesky and Threadloop. Threadloop, while also centralized, has management Lemuria considers more trustworthy. Guro and Endre, from Norway, keep continued watch over Threadloop and its sewists, and ever since Lemuria discovered a security bug in Threadloop's code, the two parties have been on slightly friendly terms.

On Bluesky, sewists are proliferating; and on the AT Protocol, the underlying protocol that Bluesky functions on, a new player is arising. The British mobile app developer Doug Todd (known as Zambrella on GitHub), is developing Craftsky, a social platform targeted at crafters in general (not just sewists, like Sewcial and Threadloop; and not just knitters, like Ravelry). Bluesky and the AT Protocol are open; and so is Craftsky.

Lemuria, as part of his taxonomy work, desires that photographs of makes be publicly available; for him to taxonomize, and for readers to verify, and for every other sewist on Earth to take inspiration and learn from each other, too. Thus, he sees the closed nature of Sewcial as directly antithetical to this openness he values, especially when building out the Tree of Clothing, binomial by binomial. (For a taste of his most recent work, see the Silversaga monograph from May 2026.)

He adopts a strong mindset of openness; believing that the more free and more accessible information is, the better. In his work, he often answers either to the Tree of Clothing, and the 2300s fashion historian and vintage sewing enthusiast who may come to appreciate that tree's existence.

People have tried to reach out to Nielsen for comment, but they got no reply, so we're not going to try either. The Earth keeps spinning; and both Nielsen's Perth and Lemuria's Manila will be plunged into the dark, and when it returns to the light, the drama shall begin anew.