I don’t know about you, but I just love making test garments. Whether you call it a muslin, a toile or a calico, it all means the same thing: a garment made for fitting and testing out sewing and tailoring techniques before cutting into your fashion fabric. Muslins I have known and loved! The idea […]
I’m busily writing a post about fit, fit, fit and fit problems of commercial patterns. Then I open my blog feed to find this incredibly inspirational and instructive piece by my favourite sewing blogger at “Cloning Couture.” I learn so much here from the thought process of the design and from the stories of the […]
God and Air Canada willing, I’ll be touching down in Madrid with my husband on Labour Day weekend. These days, with all the apparent luggage-related chaos at airports around the world (and especially here at home), knowing what to pack in a carry-on and in checked baggage has taken on even more urgency. Add onto […]
What would a jacket be without sleeves? Well, a vest, I suppose. But the truth is that a sleeve is not a sleeve is not a sleeve. In fact, when I look at this season’s runway collections (and everything in ready-to wear from the most expensive to the cheapest fast fashion) it seems that it […]
It’s been months in the making. I’ve spent hours measuring and drawing, cutting and pinning, sewing and seam-ripping. But I’ve finally finished the sloper – and it fits me! When last I recorded my progress, I had redrafted the sloper incorporating changes to solve problems that seemed to have emerged sometime between moulage and sloper. […]
[*Little Black Jacket sometimes referred to as the LFJ or Little French Jacket] And so the real fun begins. Here’s where I get to play fashion designer. I remember years ago when I used to make most of my own clothes, I never began a project without having first chosen the fabric for it. I […]
Karl Lagerfeld, late of the House of Chanel, once said, “One is never over-dressed or underdressed with a little black dress.” Amen to that. And amen to my LBD project. It is finally over. After four muslins of four different dresses, much machinating over which one to choose, I have finally finished one. Based on […]
The day has finally arrived…I have finished my third Little French Jacket and I am now excited to find places to wear it! Oh how I loved the alpacas…and their wool! More about that in an upcoming post. We just returned from a wonderful four-week vacation that saw us taking a ship through the Panama […]
As 2020 draws to a close, I’m tempted to write a recap of my favourite design and sewing projects of 2019 just to see what I’ve learned. I’ve never done that before, but I think that I learned a few important things this year and need that recap for myself. But that will have to […]
A couple of years ago, I wrote about my obsession with finding the perfect sewing journal. You know the kind: a place where you can write about sewing plans, sketch designs, keep fabric swatches, muse about how well (or not so well) a project progressed. And, if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, […]
How many times have you read a book or watched a movie that was at least partially set in a book shop? There are quite a few (remember You’ve Got Mail?). But what about a fabric store? Wouldn’t that be an excellent place for characters to explore life? I mean, just think about the possibilities. […]
After her mother’s unexpected death, struggling writer Charlotte (Charlie) Hudson moves into her family house after her older, mostly absent sister Evelyn instructs her to empty the family home of objects and memories to ready it for sale. When Charlie stumbles on a dusty old sewing machine hidden away among the clutter of detritus in […]
It seems so appropriate that as we enter the final days of 2020, I have finally finished that last of my two major 2020 sewing-designing-related projects for the year. At the beginning of the year, I set a goal to master (as much as possible) shirt-making. That project took up much of the first half […]
A few blocks from where we live in the city, there was, for many years, a tailor shop. Focused exclusively on menswear, they always displayed a garment-in-progress in the window. Often when we walked by, I marvelled at the “stuff” that seemed to be underneath the lapel (or revere as it is called in the […]
