Since I learned to sew from my mom, I had a lot of tools available to me from the get-go, and I could then acquire other things on an as-needed basis. This was good because, in most towns where I’ve lived, the only place to get sewing tools is Jo Ann’s. The store has a quality that my dad would refer to as “Wal-Marty,” and so I’m never very inclined to hang around browsing. If I’d had to go in and build a kit from scratch, I don’t know if I ever would have started sewing. Most likely, I would have gotten muddled and left with three dusty fake flowers, a pair of embroidery scissors, and some puffer paint.

 Instead, my essential toolbox looks something like this. The list is gleaned from personal experience and from sewing book recommendations, particularly Diana Rupp’s Sew Everything Workshop. Pretty much everything on it can be bought at Jo Ann’s CrazyMegaCraftopolis. It’s best to make a beeline for what you want, then get out before you’re hypnotized by the acres of polar fleece.

 (Of course, these tools are also available online, or at an independent fabric store, if you’re lucky enough to have one!)

 Rotary Cutter and Mat. I wouldn’t want to live without my rotary cutter, which allows for much greater precision while cutting. If you plan to continue sewing for a long time, it’s an excellent idea to invest in a Gingher.

•  Looking a little bit ahead of your cutting wheel as you work (rather than right down at it) will help you cut straighter lines.

Scissors and Shears. Use the rotary cutter for the fabric, and a pair of dressmaker’s shears for trimming seams and hems, slashing pleats, and any other cutting you do while sewing. Keep the scissors for cutting paper. A pair of little embroidery scissors is nice for notching seam allowances and trimming excess thread.  

Tracing Wheel, Paper, and Pattern Weights. This is an example of how a small investment in the right tools can make a huge difference, in terms of both process and results. When cutting, I like to keep the pattern and the fabric as straight and flat as possible. These three tools facilitate that, and they’ll also keep you from tearing up your pattern the first time you use it.

• Before you start sewing, and even before you start making a muslin, use the tracing wheel to copy the pattern in the size you need onto lightweight interfacing or butcher paper. Save the original in a large manila envelope.
• You can buy nice, compact, aesthetically pleasing pattern weights, but a can of beans works just fine if you’re not particular.

Ruler. Use for measuring hems and seam allowances, altering length, placing buttonholes, making bias tape… A small investment can get you the 18-inch, clear, bendable kind.

Pencil, fabric pen, or chalk. You’ll spend a lot of time marking your fabric, and finding something that’s comfortable for you and safe for the garment is well worth the effort. I usually draw lightly with a pencil and then flick away the marks with an eraser. However, tailor’s chalk is an even better option, and a nice, smooth fabric pen is wonderfully pleasant.

Pins and pincushions. I like to have a set of very narrow pins for silk, and I’d love to have a Scrooge McDuck-style swimming pool full of standard dressmaker’s pins, if that weren’t a bad idea in so many ways.

• Bonus points if your pincushion is something other than the Dritz tomato.

Seam ripper. For my money, the actual construction of a garment is by far the most fun part of the process. Unfortunately, I tend to enjoy it a little too much; things go well for a while, and so I daydream. The next thing I know I’ve stitched the bodice front to the skirt back. Enter the seam ripper, pure genius distilled into metal and plastic.

Where do you get supplies? What would you add to this list?

Image credits: Lovely toolbox from Sharingneedles.com, snazzy Gingher Seam Ripper.

Just wanted to drop a note to tell you that I’m doing my first giveaway on the Colette Patterns Facebook page, if you’re interested! I’m giving away 4 yards (or up to $40) worth of a fabric of your choice from Sew Mama Sew. You only need to pick your favorite and let me know what it is in the comments section of the post on our Facebook page.

I’m hoping to do more future giveaways there, so become a fan on Facebook if you’re interested!

Every industry has a lexicon, but how does the lexicon of the fashion industry effect those of us who are interested in style, clothes and their creation but who do not work in it? Obviously, there is a wealth of specific terms related to pattern creation, garment construction and the necessary technology that are common between the commercial and home-based forms of clothing production. But what about all the other terms that exist as a way of describing what we see/make? How much of a DIYers’ vocabulary has been directly affected by ‘the industry’?

Let me explain my personal angle. When I was small, my mother brought in extra cash as a dressmaker, her sewing machine seemingly permanently set up on the dining table (except for when it was put away so we could actually eat our dinner). Before that time she worked stints in a bridle wear company and at a big London-based costumier. Yet the tissue of her craft and labour was called material. By the age of 19, I had decided to follow a similar path and went to university to study Fashion Design. It wasn’t until I found myself in the studios of the Fashion Department, that I discovered material was also called fabric. In fact, the lecturers, tutors and technicians there seemed to have their own foreign tongue. Like infants learning to talk, through emersion, repetition and reinforcement  we students also began to adopt many of these words. Material became fabric. Photos became images. Magazines became sources (this was largely pre-internet).

Although the acquisition of this new language was largely subconscious, the times in which I was made consciously aware of my vague fluency, I felt proud. Proud I guess to be part of something (Fashion!) that at the age of 20 seemed so vital, energising and socially relevant (which, at its best, I still believe it can be).

As the university course wore on, I heard my tutors use other words and phrases too: ones that I wasn’t so inclined to pick up. An obvious example of what I mean is the singularisation of items commonly accepted as plural. When analysing high street trends for a group assignment, we were asked to uncover the most prevalent ‘trouser’ trend. For my very casual final collection, I received some (rare) praise for an innovative ‘jean’ design. In fact, in my subsequent post-university involvement in the fashion industry, I even heard speak of the latest look for ‘glass wear’, meaning spectacles. Where did this singularisation of plurals come from? I can’t tell you, but what I do know is that it didn’t sit well with me. It was a bridge too far, uncomfortably close to the fashion-speak satirised in ‘Absolutely Fabulous’, linked to well-worn fashion journalist phrases such as ‘must-have’ and something being ‘important this season’.

Such language felt pretentious, exclusive and snobby, often used by people too concerned with projecting the perception that they somehow understand fashion and are uniquely able to translate for the benefit of the rest of the population. Before my awareness of the environmental and social damage caused by the fashion industry, the essence of the aforementioned mentality was what I hated the most about the industry as I saw it: the apparent continual preoccupation of appearance without meaning.

My reaction was to make a strong personal distinction between the language I felt represents the more vacuous side of fashion, and the language I believed genuinely assisted the communication of descriptions and concepts. I even began to, and in fact probably still do, distrust the word ‘fashion’ itself, as it seemed to me too closely associated with the showy, faddy and self-promoting elements of the industry. Instead, where appropriate, I preferred to replace ‘fashion’ with ‘style’ and the ‘fashion industry’ became the ‘clothing industry’.  

It seems, post-Sex in the City, people are more clued in to such speak than ever before. Am I alone in my reaction towards it? Have I over-thought the situation or not allowed myself to grow out of an arguably juvenile take on it? I would love to hear your thoughts on the subject.

Carrie’s musings on a creative space yesterday got me thinking about the kind of space that inspires me.

First, I’ll say off the bat that I am not a tidy person by nature. My long suffering and very neat husband can attest to this. I think I’m just impulsive and get excited about moving on to the next thing rather than finishing up and cleaning after myself. Stuff tends to accumulate on my desk, on my dresser, wherever.

However, I’ve also had to face the fact that cramped, messy rooms stress me out. I just feel stifled and overwhelmed by unorganized mountains of stuff, and I hate not being able to find the tools I need when I want them. So these two impulses are constantly duking it out in my brain. I aspire to be neat.

Now that I have this gorgeous new studio to work in, I’ve been dreaming up ways to organize everything. My fabric is shelved, but there are so many little tools and notions to take care of! Most are floating around in drawers at the moment, but I’ve been scouting around on the Craft Rooms and Pretty Organized pools on Flickr for more ideas, and there are some good ones!

I’d say the things that get me ready to work are lots of space to move around, tons of natural light, plenty of work surfaces, and having my materials visible but organized and accessible.

{images above: (1) by ReneeJulia, (2) by *jenny b allsorts, (3) by Three Red Apples, (4) by puddlekins, (5) by Mundo Flo}

When I was a kid, I loved visiting my dad’s office. He’d filled it floor to ceiling with goofiness – stuffed meerkats, vintage Moon Tomato Paste signs, giant plastic chicken masks, and tons of pictures of our dogs. I think all of this kept him going through twenty years of twelve-hour workdays, and I had such a deep love of the silly that I almost wished I could skip summer and spend my waking hours at work.

Too much clutter can get in the way of creativity, but I can’t help dreaming of sitting down to sew in a place like that. My thread rack would hang between a photo of the San Diego Chicken and a shelf of dinosaur figurines. I’d copy pictures of plants and kitchen tools from The Joy of Cooking, and I’d sketch them on the walls. The off-color linoleum floor would be covered by a thick blue area rug. One whole wall would be windows, and another would have a door to the outside.

Underneath the stuff, I would hide cleanliness and practicality. I think it’s important to have designated work stations – a table for laying out and cutting, another for hand-sewing. A large desk for sewing and serging, which I’d try to keep clear of everything except pins, needles, bobbins, and thread. The iron would hang from a place of honor on the back of the door.

But I’m probably getting carried away imagining. In practice, I’ve moved a lot in the past few years, and I’ve never had much disposable income. I have to pare down to mobile essentials, like a card table and a rotary cutting board that folds in threes. For storage, I reuse containers. A cardboard box is excellent for holding small scraps, and its ugliness is easy to combat with a tube of paint or a wrapping of pages from cooking magazines.

What is your dream studio like? How do you deal with real-life barriers, such as a small workspace? What inspires you while you work?

Carrie is our newest contributor to the Colette Patterns blog! She is going to be here every week with new posts on sewing basics and technique, as well as her own sewing experiences. Here’s a little about Carrie, in her own words:

“I grew up in Marshfield, Wisconsin, went to college in California, and am currently living part of the year in southern New Mexico and part in Vancouver, Washington… but I’m planning to move to Canada within the year. My greatest desire is to be a professional dabbler — there isn’t much I like better than messing around with some new hobby, with no need and only a mild wish to become good at it. Barring that, I’d like to become a professional librarian.

I live with my dog, but the pupcake and I both love cats and hope to add one to our family soon.

I’m so excited to be blogging for Colette Patterns! Of all the things I dabble in, sewing is one of the most loved. I can’t wait to learn more over the coming year and to talk with all of you.”

Please welcome her, and look for her first post later today!

Are you interested in joining the blog? We’re also looking for someone to write about fashion and sewing history, so if you’re interested, get in touch!

The kimono sleeve came into fashion for ‘Western’ women’s clothing towards the tail end of the 1940’s when the exaggerated shoulders which had previously been fashionable began to evolve into a more natural silhouette. As women’s fashion entered into the 1950’s, the fashionable silhouette for shoulders continued to move away from the large padded ‘Power’ look of the 1930’s/40’s towards the extreme opposite. A trend for petite and slopping shoulders emerged, alongside the nipped in waists, waspy hips and doll-like everything else, as a reflection of the demure and ultra-feminine stereotype to which society largely expected women to adhere. The kimono sleeve often fitted the bill for this look, as its construction method emphasises a continuous line between the neck and arm, subduing rather than highlighting the shoulder.

Also known as the grown-on sleeve in some pattern cutting books, basically it is formed by creating the body of a garment and the sleeve from the same continuous piece of fabric rather than separate bodice and sleeve pieces with a seam line running along the top of the sleeve as well as underneath to join the back and front. A close fitting kimono or grown-on sleeve variation may also include a gusset panel under the arm. This is a diamond shaped piece of fabric which allows for ease of movement.   

The kimono sleeve style became incredibly popular throughout the 1950’s and into the early 1960’s. Garments and sewing patterns featured a variety of lengths of kimono or grown-on sleeves, from the tiniest cap sleeve variation, to ¾ lengths and longer, with and without the underarm gusset; and as you can see by these images certainly looked a million miles from what many would imagine a garment with ‘kimono sleeves’ to look like!

This type of sleeve has re-appeared in women’s fashion but has never achieved the same level of popularity since that mid-century period. Because of this, I have always associated this sleeve style with that period which is also the era of dress I am personally most drawn to. Therefore, it has become one of my favourite vintage features and an element I look for when hunting for vintage patterns on eBay. Some sewers dislike this type of sleeve as the look and feel when wearing isn’t often as ‘tidy’ as a regular set-in sleeve. Personally, I love the smooth and elegant effect these sleeves achieve across the top of the bodice or blouse, particularly when combined with a high straight neck and dipped back.

As I say, I’m a fan. I recently deployed a vintage pattern that featured grown-on sleeves to create my Rockabilly tribute dress (pictured below). Gertie made a stunning job of a kimono sleeved blouse pattern by matching the gingham fabric perfectly along the sleeve seam. What are your thoughts on this type of sleeve or silhouette? Any successes or failures to report? Any fit issues that arose? We’d (well, I’d) love to hear!

As much as I love to wear black, there are few things as exciting to a sewer as putting together colors and textures. Playing with color must be a fundamental reason that a lot of us get into sewing. We each have our personal preferences, the colors we think look best on us, and the colors we have emotional attachments to. Putting these colors together in interesting and novel ways is a big factor in what makes sewing so much fun.

Lately, I’ve been noticing a lot of color-focused blogs and websites. They are a rich source of inspiration for picking out fabric or coming up with new color stories. Here are a few of the sites I’ve been checking out:

Color Collective, pictured above, is a gorgeous blog by Lauren Willhite. She pulls unusual palettes from the work of other artists and designers, and the results are striking and unusual.

The Wear Palettes blog draws its colors from street fashion photos. There are many beautiful slightly muted palettes to be seen here.

Colour Lovers is a community website where anyone can post color palettes, and it is absolutely chock full of good ideas.

Kuler is Adobe’s take on the color community. Again, lots of good ideas to be had!

Just looking at these makes me want to do a little fabric shopping!

I guess I’m on a bit of a Macaron kick, but I just had to post this variation that Meghan emailed me! She used a sheer tulle for the top yoke and of course made it sleeveless. She says, “It’s a little variation on the strapless dresses that always slip down on me!”

So creative. And what a stunner, huh?

You can see more at Meghan’s blog, Sew Happy Clothes.

So many pretty Macarons in red, black, and white have been popping up lately! I love the trio of dresses above from The Long & Winding Bobbin, including two pretty Macarons and a Ceylon.

Then there is this lovely red and polka dot number from Elena. I love it with the brooch.

How about this polka dotted beauty from Creative Kat? White with black dots is one of my all-time favorite textile patterns.