Sewing Classes at Tchad

Getting ready for the Spring session start tomorrow and hoping folks make notes as clear and clean as Kelly's are!

McCall's #7997 for the win, because who doesn't love a low-cut, double-breasted, and sleeveless suit dress?

Santiago was experimenting with for a club costume. It was the first time we'd had it up here - most of the time we're using papier-mâché to get built up effects like this.
This was a bit of a game-changer. I was worried about the fumes from thermoplastic, but it gave off no fumes at all - it can be a little tricky to work with to get the right texture and finish, but such a fun new material.

When you wear one thing you've made to make another....

Aside from that set-in sleeve and admiring its beauty and ex*****on...

You'll notice once you've sewn for a while that your projects become something other than special projects you have to look for in your closet - they'll become staples that you just *have* and you'll catch yourself thinking: "Huh... I'm wearing something I made while I'm making something new" and that is when you really begin to realize where all of this is going.

Santiago was trying to give a sheer collar some stability and we stumbled on this - this is probably the best sheer fusible interfacing I've ever seen - they aren't paying me anything for this - it is just a great sheer fusible!

Lily was delighted that the lining looked as good as the outer fabric... "Is it too late to make this reversible? I LOVE this!"

It WAS a little late to make it reversible without a lot of reconfiguring and backtracking, but there is always something to be said for a fun lining.

"I'd really like some help repairing these shorts! I was going for "sexy cut-away" but made a mistake and went too far!"

"Ma'am, I am a sewing teacher, not a magician."

The nice thing about having a small and functional archive is that when someone says: "I want to do some kind of stupidly big sleeve! Something just absurd!"

You can walk over to the shelves, pull out a copy of The Delineator from 1895, and say "Perhaps something like this? It doesn't get much more absurd than this..."

Handmade French Jackets are our specialty over the past few years - each fabric has a different construction challenge and each has a million variations for trim details!
Here Shelly used a piece of chain with fringed-bias self fabric and leather for the trim.

We were really short on fabric for facings and hems, so she reinforced the edges with tailors twill and took the silk charmeuse lining right to the edges. The fabric is stable enough to handle it without collapsing and the look is SO flat and clean.

Aubrey wants to remind everyone that classes begin again on 15 April! She recently worked up Vogue #9131 in pale blue taffeta and netting over the course of two sessions - it came out great and she has been a delight to have around as she works through things and answers questions about drag process and fit from everyone up here.

When I have folks interested in embroidery, I like to tell them to simplify the image and take the chance at free-handing the design a bit. An outline is fine, but if you over-complicate the pattern it gets muddy, hard to see, to work, and overly mechanistic.
Mary Kay did these flowers for a western-style shirt-dress in gabardine and did just that - outline with a long/short stitch and some seed stitching and french knots to fill. She worked them separately on matching gabardine so that she could slipstitch them on and not worry about placement or distortion showing up in the finished garment.
The softness and thoughtfulness of the stitching absolutely suggests a human hand, which is why I do what I do - rigid and cold mechanical stitches have their place, but the warmth of handwork at any level of skill can't be beat.

"I can't get the zipper in this bias-cut silk to lay right and I've tried basting over and over"
Tip: Sometimes, and it is no fun at all, you have to baste it in while the fabric is hanging from the shoulders so that you get the fullest effect of gravity. If it is very fitted, you may want to baste it wrong-side-out on a dress form, perhaps with the hem weighted a bit.