The more expensive the fabric, I buy, the more trepidation I feel just at that moment when, shears in hand, I hover above the swath of fabric on the table in front of me. I have already prepared the tweed bouclé by steaming it within an inch of its life, and I have carefully laid […]
I wonder if you’re ever like me. Do you ever find a piece of fabric that you really, truly love but after you buy it, you can’t seem to find the perfect project for it? Or maybe you have leftover material (from that sale where you buy one metre and get two metres free. Who […]
My husband and I ready for the evening at sea. Yikes! All that dark hair I had! A few years ago, my husband and I were on a kick to figure out what the concept of “luxury” means to people these days, and by extension, what it means when we say something is “luxurious.” We […]
When it comes to tailored jackets of any type, it seems to me that the collar and lapel (or revere as my UK friends would say) shapes make the design. According to Indochino Made-to-Measure, there are three basic lapel shapes: notch, peak and shawl.[1] From the Indochino blog Further, they suggest that each of them […]
Well, I never thought I’d ever write or even utter these words: this is the beginning of my man’s shirt project. It’s the last “project” of 2019 and it was unexpected, to say the least. Anyone who knows me knows that my design and sewing projects are pretty well confined to me, me, me. My […]
A couple of years ago, I embarked on a journey to learn how to draft and create a bodice sloper―or block if you prefer―based on the flat pattern method. I wanted to have this template to use to design my own patterns. I learned a lot through the Craftsy course I took with Suzy Furer, […]
Do you ever look something up online and find yourself stumbling onto a site that grabs your attention and pulls it away from whatever you were searching for in the first place? It happens all the time to me―especially when I’m researching a new book. But it also happens sometimes when I’m looking for sewing-related […]
Anyone who has been reading my online posts for a while will already know that I’m a bit of an odd duck when it comes to sewing bloggers. Rather than being a sewist who writes, as most sewing bloggers seem to be, I am a writer who sews—that’s why my posts usually contain a story […]
It’s the dog days of summer here in Toronto. The humidity is high and the temperatures soaring. I’ve just returned from a two-week road trip to the east coast where it was cooler for at least part of the trip. It was a great trip, but now it’s back to writing (a new book is […]
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. […]
What better day to talk about great fabrics for my tailoring project than the first day of autumn? Although, in years past, whenever I thought about tailored jackets I also thought about matching pants or skirts (can you say suit?), these days the thought of a tailored jacket is more likely to have me thinking […]
I’ve said it before (as in my last post), and I’ll say it again: cardigans are useful pieces in any winter wardrobe―regardless of your age or style. It’s just a matter of finding the right design and fabric for your particular lifestyle. For me, anything black immediately appeals, as does a lightweight piece that I […]
The history of sewing patterns in the 19th and 20th centuries—and even into the 21st—says a lot about what we sew and how we sew it. And, for me, their evolution hasn’t been an entirely happy experience. But, before I get to that, let’s take a look back as I like to do. Sewing patterns […]
Do you ever look something up online and find yourself stumbling onto a site that grabs your attention and pulls it away from whatever you were searching for in the first place? It happens all the time to me―especially when I’m researching a new book. But it also happens sometimes when I’m looking for sewing-related […]
