One of my earlier embroidery animations, this was my second one. I made sure that the designs were very simple, since I wanted this to be fairly long. The tangled thread is just purposefully messed up French knots.
Hey i’m a fashion design student so i have tons and tons of pdfs and docs with basic sewing techniques, pattern how-tos, and resources for fabric and trims. I’ve compiled it all into a shareable folder for anyone who wants to look into sewing and making their own clothing. I’ll be adding to this folder whenever i come across new resources
Updated just now with new hand sewing resources (mainly buttonholes) and textbook pdfs on fashion history, fashion illustration, and thinking through designs!
fuck it, i'm curious. reblog and tag with the first fictional death to ever rewrite your brain chemistry and/or make you cry like a baby. mine was ares from the underland chronicles (who, for context, was a giant bat.) to this day i will weep if i think too hard about it. okay, go.
Update: they still need wheels but that is actually one of the last things I put on because they're hand sewn yo-yos. And I need to trim these down to fit the original pillow :) but now they look like trucks and not sleds.
Update.... (4 months after gifting it oops) yes! It did fit! The shoulder seams should have been tightened maybe a half inch? Which i found to be the same when i made my own version of the dress.
But that would have involved unpicking the binding and sleeves and I just... this fabric looked great but was awful to unpick. And it showed every hole. My friend didn't mind, so we left it as is :)
(I never took pics of the finished dress whoops...)
I want to sew but my back is literally protesting it right now 😭 I don't know if it's my chair, my sewing machine table height, or my set up but I always end up in the sewing shrimp position
This weekend I was told a story which, although I’m kind of ashamed to admit it, because holy shit is it ever obvious, is kind of blowing my mind.
A friend of a friend won a free consultation with Clinton Kelly of What Not To Wear, and she was very excited, because she has a plus-size body, and wanted some tips on how to make the most of her wardrobe in a fashion culture which deliberately puts her body at a disadvantage.
Her first question for him was this: how do celebrities make a plain white t-shirt and a pair of weekend jeans look chic? She always assumed it was because so many celebrities have, by nature or by design, very slender frames, and because they can afford very expensive clothing. But when she watched What Not To Wear, she noticed that women of all sizes ended up in cute clothes that really fit their bodies and looked great. She had tried to apply some guidelines from the show into her own wardrobe, but with only mixed success. So - what gives?
His answer was that everything you will ever see on a celebrity’s body, including their outfits when they’re out and about and they just get caught by a paparazzo, has been tailored, and the same goes for everything on What Not To Wear. Jeans, blazers, dresses - everything right down to plain t-shirts and camisoles. He pointed out that historically, up until the last few generations, the vast majority of people either made their own clothing or had their clothing made by tailors and seamstresses. You had your clothing made to accommodate the measurements of your individual body, and then you moved the fuck on. Nothing on the show or in People magazine is off the rack and unaltered. He said that what they do is ignore the actual size numbers on the tags, find something that fits an individual’s widest place, and then have it completely altered to fit. That’s how celebrities have jeans that magically fit them all over, and the rest of us chumps can’t ever find a pair that doesn’t gape here or ride up or slouch down or have about four yards of extra fabric here and there.
I knew that having dresses and blazers altered was probably something they were doing, but to me, having alterations done generally means having my jeans hemmed and then simply living with the fact that I will always be adjusting my clothing while I’m wearing it because I have curves from here to ya-ya, some things don’t fit right, and the world is just unfair that way. I didn’t think that having everything tailored was something that people did.
It’s so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t know this. But no one ever told me. I was told about bikini season and dieting and targeting your “problem areas” and avoiding horizontal stripes. No one told me that Jennifer Aniston is out there wearing a bigger size of Ralph Lauren t-shirt and having it altered to fit her.
I sat there after I was told this story, and I really thought about how hard I have worked not to care about the number or the letter on the tag of my clothes, how hard I have tried to just love my body the way it is, and where I’ve succeeded and failed. I thought about all the times I’ve stood in a fitting room and stared up at the lights and bit my lip so hard it bled, just to keep myself from crying about how nothing fits the way it’s supposed to. No one told me that it wasn’t supposed to. I guess I just didn’t know. I was too busy thinking that I was the one that didn’t fit.
I thought about that, and about all the other girls and women out there whose proportions are “wrong,” who can’t find a good pair of work trousers, who can’t fill a sweater, who feel excluded and freakish and sad and frustrated because they have to go up a size, when really the size doesn’t mean anything and it never, ever did, and this is just another bullshit thing thrown in your path to make you feel shitty about yourself.
I thought about all of that, and then I thought that in elementary school, there should be a class for girls where they sit you down and tell you this stuff before you waste years of your life feeling like someone put you together wrong.
So, I have to take that and sit with it for a while. But in the meantime, I thought perhaps I should post this, because maybe my friend, her friend, and I are the only clueless people who did not realise this, but maybe we’re not. Maybe some of you have tried to embrace the arbitrary size you are, but still couldn’t find a cute pair of jeans, and didn’t know why.
I love this post but it always frustrated me just a little because I can’t even afford to buy new clothes let alone get the clothes I have tailored. But then I remembered that a lot of things are easier to do than you think they will be, so here’s some resources on how to alter your own clothes!
RIP Joann's. Now many places in the US no longer have a local fabric store, such as it even was toward the end.
There are some good posts going around about where to shop for fabric and craft supplies online, like this one for example. But if you're a beginner-to-intermediate sewist, and the way you've always shopped for fabric is by going to the store and touching it, it can be a hard, even cruel adjustment to suddenly be looking at a photo online and trying to piece together from the inconsistent descriptions what you're actually looking at.
So I'm going to just try to bang together a little primer on What Things Are Called, and how to educate yourself, so that you don't have to do what I did and just buy a ton of inappropriate stuff you wound up not being able to use for what you'd thought. And I will link to some resources that will help with this. This will be garment-sewing-centric but will, I think, be fairly broadly applicable.
The first thing is to look carefully at your desired project. If it is a commercial pattern, it will usually tell you what kind of fabric you need, but it will describe it in not the same words it's often sold under. If it is NOT a commercial pattern and you're kind of winging it, it's even harder. So here is how to start figuring out what you need.
Number one: Knit or Woven?
Quilting fabric is woven. If you are making a quilt, you want a woven. Most craft projects are made with woven fabric-- tote bags, upholstery, you name it.
Many garments are knits. T-shirts, yoga pants, cardigans. It is easy to know, because knits stretch. They can either stretch both ways (along the length and along the width) or just one way (usually along the width); this is confusingly either called 2-way stretch or 4-way stretch. Yes, stores are inconsistent. Look carefully at the description, and they will usually specify-- "along the grain" or "in all directions". Some garments require stretch only around the body-- maxi skirts, knit dresses etc-- while some absolutely need stretch both ways, like bathing suits.
No, you absolutely cannot clone your favorite knit t-shirt in quilting cotton. It will not fit. Most knit garments have "negative ease", meaning they are smaller than your body and stretch to fit. All woven garments have "positive ease", meaning they are larger than your body, unless very firm shaping undergarments are used.
SMALL EXCEPTION: There exist "stretch wovens", which are woven fabrics made with elastic fibers. These will be labeled as such. They are actually harder to sew with than regular wovens because they almost never have their stretch percentage labeled; they are NOT suitable for knit patterns. Avoid them, until you are more advanced and know how to accomodate them, is my advice!
Number two: WEIGHT.
How heavy is the fabric? How thick? How thin? This is measured in two main ways-- ounces per yard (denim is often 8oz, 10 oz, 12 oz) or grams per square meter. But many fabric retailers do not tell you a weight, they use words like "bottomweight" or "dress-weight", and you have to learn to figure out what they mean by that.
My lifehack for learning these has been go to go to ready-to-wear clothing retailers and see if they give the weights of the fabric their garments are made from. (Yes, I learned how to shop for clothes online instead of in-store years ago, because I am fat; some of us have had to do this a long time.)
If you are making a pair of trousers, you need heavier fabric than if you are making a blouse. Do not buy a floaty translucent chiffon to make your work trousers, it will not work no matter how cute the color is. Learn how the different weights of fabric are described, and you will improve your odds of finding what you need.
Number three: DRAPE.
Is it stiff? Is it fluid? Is it soft? is it firm? There are a lot of very artsy words used for this, and you may find yourself puzzling over things with a fluid hand, or a dry, crisp hand, or "a lot of drape", or maybe the listing doesn't describe it at all. This segues neatly into another technical thing, which is the WEAVE of the fabric. There is a dizzying array of words that tell you what kind of fabric it is-- twill, tabby, challis, chiffon, crepe, organza, georgette. And these will give you insight into the drape, and thus into the texture/usability of this fabric, and how suitable it may or may not be for your project.
I know it's a lot to think about but I am now going to give you resources for where to see all this stuff.
Number one is Mood Fabrics, which I can't believe hasn't been in any of the posts I've seen so far. They are a huge store in NYC's Fashion District and yes you can go there, but when I went there it overwhelmed me so much I left empty-handed. But what they have is AN INCREDIBLE WEBSITE. They have everything on there, and what's most important for you, their listings are INCREDIBLY consistent. They have VIDEOS of many of the fabrics, where a sales associate will hold it, wave it, stretch it, and tell you verbally what it is and what it's for, in about thirty seconds. HUNDREDS of these videos.
Whether you want to buy from them or not, go to Mood Fabrics, click around, find their listings, and read them. They will tell you fabric content, weight (usually gsm), often weave, they have little graphics that show you if it's for pants, dresses, shirts. And they have those videos. Look at the listings, watch the videos, and you will leave knowing a lot more about how to look at an online listing of fabric and know what you're getting.
Another really excellent website for this is Stonemountain & Daughter. I've actually not bought anything from them yet (they came highly recommended, but they're not cheap), but their online listings are, again, very thorough and very detailed. They always have a picture of the fabric with a fold in it held in place by a pin, which does more to help you understand the weight and drape of a fabric than any other static image ever could-- that visual, combined with how informative the listings are, has helped me learn to estimate fabric weights on other sites very effectively.
And here is a page that's ostensibly about how to wash silk, but I found it so useful because it gives such a clear image of what each weave/type of silk fabric looks and drapes like. I've never bought anything from these guys either, but this is a good resource.
Learn a little bit about fabric so you know what you're looking for, and you can begin to replace some of that "i just have to go and feel it in person" problem. There will still be trial and error, but you'll have a better starting place at least.
cloth fibers ranked by how much sense they make to me
wool. the most sensible and natural fiber. wool is hair from meaty, not very bright animals. I have hair, meat and did not excell in school, so I relate and understand this best
cotton. Cotton is made from plants, but don't be scared yet. these plants are basically small sheep for they are wooly and have hard seeds in them like how sheep are wooly and have hard bones inside them
silk. I was fairly terrorized as a child by caterpillars that made massive silk tents in mulberry trees. We came in into conflict because both of us liked to eat mulberries and climb mulberry trees and also because they liked falling out of the tree upon my person. this was distressing for me for various reasons primary amongst them was that I had been told by the wisdom of my peers that if one of them bit me I would die. anyway I believe that silk comes from caterpillars because I have seen it I have witnessed it I have lived it
linen. bizarre. have you watched videos of people turning flax into fibers? I have watched video after video of flax being transformed from plant to linen and none of it makes any sense. One moment, it's a plant and then if you comb it enough it becomes hair. utterly incomprehensibe witchcraft
PLASTIC? PLASTIC? PLAstic??????
spandex. incomprehensibe. uncontainable. might as well be string theory to me.
Going into the office this week made me realize I wanted to make more shirts (the walk from my car to the building is just too cold for breezy floaty dresses XD 🥶). And I had some cute valentines day fabric. It wasn't enough to make a dress but a shirt? Perfect ❤️
Started with a super simple dress pattern that I cut roughly 13 inches below the arm hole. Honestly the hardest part of this pattern is the dang v-neck neckband. (I basted and swam ripped and basted and seam ripped and it ain't perfect, but it's better 👌)
I didn't realize until I had sewed the seams together that I had cut the pattern so these arrows pointed just so perfectly 😅
Then I just put on some sleeves a hem. I tried to add a lace ruffle, but I'm not sure if it was my machine being a pain or just me but the ruffle would not cooperate without sticked straight out in places. Oh we try and we seam rip sometimes
Then just threw a hem on it and it's good to go for tge next time I'm in office
... I suppose I should maybe iron it too buuuuut...
Update: it went okay, I'd give it a 7/10. It cane together fairly easily, and I do know where I think I could improve of I make this dress again.
In the bodice I crossed over too far which is causing the sleeves to pull a bit weirdly when I raise my arms. I also gathered and then tried to cross over, when I think I should have matched notches, basted, and then gathered.
I also just cut two panels to do the skirt. It worked fine and the fabric is thin enough that it doesn't cause much poofiness, but I did struggled trying to gather it down enough to fit the bodice. The gathering kept sliding out, even after I stitched it down (I had thought)
But overall it's very comfy and finished up one of my wips, and used up some fabric in my stash, so mission accomplished!
Ok I still have to hem it. Mission 99% accomplished
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