This month:
Trisha asks about creating a dress form for a French fashion doll and patterns for it.
Shawn inquires about the historically correct way to piece an 1880 chemise
Cathy explains about the DPP Corsets competition and FR
At YWU we love to respond to your feedback and give you the best value for your subscription fee that we can.
Earlier this year, many of you took part in a huge reader survey. Here are the results, along with my responses to your questions and ideas, and our plans for YWU in 2010.
Archive.org is an open digital library, without the international restrictions of Google Books. This month, we share with you a few of the great historical texts on a variety of subjects that we've found.
From 1820's fashion magazines to 1900's pattern drafting texts, to shoe making manuals and hairstyling guides, we've got a lot to keep you busy over the holiday season!
Right back at the genesis of YWU I wrote an article about what I called "Holy Grails".
I'm willing to bet that most of us reading this have such projects in mind. There's a book on your shelf that naturally falls open at a certain photograph; there's a bookmark in your web browser. But we never get around to trying - it's too impractical, too expensive, too difficult, just too much all around.
This year I've actually done one of these huge projects, when I recreated a vastly decorated Edwardian Worth gown (follow this link for a FREE slideshow of museum images), and I've got so much out of it that I'm going to use this article to pull you a little bit closer to tackling your own Grail. I'm going to tell you why it's worth trying such intimidating projects, and then show you how.
This might be the most important article you ever read in YWU.
Any hobby or occupation that you indulge in regularly for a large proportion of your lifetime can have implications for your health.
Forewarned is forearmed, however, so this month we start a series of advice from our pool of experts on Health and Safety in the Sewing Room.
Suzi Clarke, Cathy Hay and Laurie Tavan dish out some great pointers to help you avoid and manage any potential ill effects.
If you work as a professional seamstress, sooner or later you will come across a difficult customer.
This doesn’t mean that you’re a terrible seamstress or businessperson. It does undoubtedly mean that you’re learning and growing – you will learn more from this client than any other.
In this article I’ll share what I’ve learnt in difficult situations over the years, and show you how to avoid these distressing times in the first place.
Who can enter? What can I enter? What are the prizes? When's the closing date?
Here's everything you need to know to take part in our unique YWU Double Period Project and competition! And you are going to take part this year, aren't you?
You've got a full year from now until our deadline in February 2011, so there's no excuse not to get going and try for one of our fabulous prizes!
This month our new dedicated interviewer, Mary Dotson, asks our Editor about her own sewing work, why she started YWU and where she sees the site going in the future.
Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion, Norah Waugh's Cut of Women's Clothes and others provide us with a fascinating insight into historical clothes. They do so partly by supplying carefully-reproduced scaled patterns of the clothes themselves for us to use in our own work.
That's all very well, but it's likely that the lady who wore the dress of your dreams in 1765 was not the same size as you - maybe not even close. So how do you manipulate the historical pattern to fit you?
Cathy Hay shows you how, both by draping on the dress form and by flat pattern adjustment.
Here at YWU we understand first-hand how difficult it can be to bind corsets, stays and bodies neatly. After all those hours of careful work, fitting, boning and stitching, the £$!*?& binding lets you down!
Even if you're otherwise a great costumer, the frustration of binding can inspire the most experienced needleperson to throw things. So in the interests of your inner calm, "Doctor" Cathy offers the cure… find out once and for all how to perfect your stays and corsets with Part One of our indispensible guide!
Here at YWU we understand first-hand how difficult it can be to bind corsets, stays and bodies neatly. After all those hours of careful work, fitting, boning and stitching, the £$!*?& binding lets you down!
Even if you're otherwise a great costumer, the frustration of binding can inspire the most experienced needleperson to throw things. So in the interests of your inner calm, "Doctor" Cathy offers the cure… find out once and for all how to perfect your stays and corsets with our indispensible guide!
This month one of our themes at YWU is about being in business as a seamster or seamstress, but you may have noticed that you can learn from advice for businesspeople even if you're not taking money for your sewing.
Well, here's another thing to consider, whether or not you're in it for the money. Have you thought about labelling your creations?
If you run your own business as a bespoke costume maker, seamstress, bridal designer or tailor, you'll know how fragile a process this business involves. People are not used to buying a product they can't yet see for a price that isn't fixed, and they tend to be nervous about it. Will they be ripped off? Will the result be what they wanted, and what if it isn't?
From your side of the equation, there are worries too. How do I know that this person will only make reasonable requests? How do I know they'll pay? How do I know that they won't ruin and try to return what I've made them?
The answer to all of these concerns is to have a good contract. (And it works especially well if you're not in business, but making something for a friend or family member.)
If you're anything like me, you'll be familiar with the experience of sitting in an office wishing you were sewing instead. In fact, wouldn't it be great to sew for a living? Be your own boss?
With twelve years in the business of playing with fabric for money, and having done so in an alarming variety of contexts, I can point out a few of the pitfalls peculiar to dressmaking businesses and offer you a few tips on how to make it work, too.
This month I've bitten the bullet and taken the hot seat myself! Thank you very much for all your great questions, I had a terrible time trying to choose between them!
I know you have one; we all do. And if we don't, we should: an idea for a costume, or one we'd like to recreate, that is way beyond our ability (or at least fiendishly fiddly), utterly impractical in timescale and budget (like reprising the work of six thousand Indian craftsmen individually sewing beetle wings onto silk for a year) and completely impractical (you have nowhere to wear it; you'd simply hang it up and gaze at it with a happy sigh).
How to make your own personalised custom Victorian corset pattern - a tutorial suitable for beginners!
One of the most frustrating challenges in corsetmaking is to get the darn thing to fit properly. Corsets are such unforgiving, tightly fitted garments that a good one must have a perfect fit; there's no room for error.
After getting frustrated with commerical patterns, you're probably starting to wonder how to draft (draw out) your own patterns from a list of measurements. Here's how, in a step-by-step format specially designed for complete beginners.
I've devised these instructions for you based on corset designs of the late 1870s. You'll still need a mock-up to check before cutting the expensive fabric, but you will be very surprised how well it fits...
The single most freeing skill that a dressmaker can have is to learn to draft his or her own patterns. To take your own measurements and a blank sheet of paper and draw a pattern that fits you individually frees you to understand the makeup and adjustment of a pattern better, not to mention the scope it gives you to shape the design.
Yes, the traditional process of pattern drafting is complicated and mysterious. Sparsely explained diagrams dizzy us with geometry and jargon. But I want to change all that for you. With sixteen years of sewing and a Maths degree under my belt, not to mention three year's training as a teacher of Mathematics, I'm well-placed to take the mystery, the jargon and as many numbers as possible out of the process. Baby step by baby step, I'll show you how you can harness the freedom of drafting your own patterns.
When you’re learning to sew, it’s awfully easy to get discouraged. You have wonderful ideas, but in the execution something is lost and the result is shoved in the back of a cupboard.
It doesn't have to be that way, though. Here I'm going to give you three of the best and quickest techniques I know, three big head starts that’ll attract the maximum number of compliments with the minimum of blood, sweat and tears.
This, in short, is the best and simplest of what I’ve learnt in my fifteen years of sewing historical costumes and wedding gowns. Click the photo to see what's possible!
We try very hard to cater for a range of ability levels at YWU. Here is an introductory Masterclass for the seamstress who wants to make the leap from that "home-made" beginner look to couture-quality greatness. Within these pages you will find the best top sewing tips from a cross-section of today’s top costuming experts.
For the first time you’ll get to pick all of our brains as we get down to the core of the issue, the brass tacks: in a few pages, you will know all the most important things that a budding costume designer or seamstress must know in order to make the leap from amateur-quality, home made results to stunning, couture-quality work.
|
