All posts tagged: teaching

The Capelet of Yay

I’m teaching a course on making the 1930s capelet that Elise gave me at Made Marion starting this Friday (are you signed up?), so of course I’ve been making prototypes of the capelet to make sure that I’ve got every possible bug figured out in different kinds of fabric. And oh my gosh, and I so excited. I love this capelet. The first version I made (shown here) is in silk velvet lined in silk twill – the trickiest, most evilest combination possible. And even so, it whips up so easily and beautifully. And it’s so versatile! I wear it loose and stole-y, or tied in a bow in front. In can also be wrapped around the neck and hooked, forming a very elegant scarf – perfect over a coat in winter, or for dressing up the ubiquitous (and, lets face it – just a little boring) merino tops of NZ winter wear. The elegant part: The gathered cape back. It just looks so beautiful on, and so beautiful in movement and lifts the cape …

Open sewing*

Published by The Dreamstress

Do you ever get stuck with your sewing? Just get to a place where you can’t figure out how to set in those sleeves, or why the waist just won’t sit right, or how to do bound buttonholes or a side zip? Or you’re trying to turn a design into a reality, and can’t figure out how many gores the skirt should have (or should you cut it as a circle?), or if the jacket needs flat lining or not, or if it will work in a tissue, or if you really should buy a crepe chiffon after all? I do this all the time. It used to be about not knowing the techniques, but now it’s about knowing too much – getting stuck in my head because there are so many options. The solution to this is a sewing community. These days I am indebted to you, dear readers, to local sewing friends like Mrs C and the Baha’i seamstresses, to the fashion experts at Massey university, and to wider sewing-blogging friends like Steph. …

The right fabric for the right project

Published by The Dreamstress

There has been a bit of a debate on the sewing-focused internet world lately regarding what those who sew and create should call themselves. Are we sewers (but it sounds like a waste disposal network!)? Are we seamstresses (so confining, old fashioned, and gendered)? Are we sewists (but it’s a made up word – gasp, shock, horror!)? I’m actually OK with all of them. I tend to use seamstress because, well, I’m an old-fashioned girl. Really though, they are all slight misnomers, because the things that make the biggest difference in the final result of your project often aren’t the seams themselves: they are fabric choice, cutting, and pressing. Pressing is so, so important – I’ll talk more about it later (the most accomplished draper/dressmaker/seamstress/costumier/pattern cutter, whatever you want to call her that I have ever worked with used to say “Never trust a seamstress who doesn’t use her iron more than her sewing machine”), but today I want to talk about fabric choice. Fabric choice can make or break a project. A really, really, …