Monthly Archives: July 2015

Tailor’s Tacks, #1

Welcome to Tailor’s Tacks, a new feature here at Line of Selvage.  I’ll be using this series to share random thoughts, and items that are bit too small for one of my normal, more voluminous articles.

Bay Area Sewists meetup – Sewing Bloggers

This past Saturday, I took part in a panel discussion at the Bay Area Sewists meetup on Sewing Blogs.  I shared the panel with local sewing bloggers Beth from Sunny Gal Studio, Emily at Dressing the Role, Laura Mae at Lilacs & Lace, and our moderator Chuleenan at C Sews.

You can see me in the button-down shirt I made as my very first project entry here at Line of Selvage.

Great #BayAreaSewists of #sewingblogs today w/ @dressingtherole @mportuesisf @lauramaedesigns

A photo posted by C Sews (@csews) on

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A New Toy

I’ve been reading David Coffin’s brand new book, The Shirtmaking Workbook: Pattern, Design, and Construction Resources. It’s a wonderful book, and it’s best described as the “yang” to the “yin” of his classic book, Shirtmaking: Developing Skills For Fine Sewing. While Shirtmaking centered mostly on skills and technique in construction, this new book concentrates on design inspiration and pointers to helpful resources.

I’ll probably post a detailed review here soon, but if you’re reading this blog you should just go out and buy it.  It has a ton of content, and it’s more than worth the price.

Coffin discusses digital pattern drafting in the early portion of the book, and describes his workflow using a large-format office printer/scanner to scan patterns and garments, edit the patterns in Adobe illustrator, and print on large format paper (13×19 inches).  With a machine that can gulp in scans that large (11×17 inches), you can scan large pattern pieces and even whole garments into the computer fairly easily.  And printing out patterns is a lot easier because there’s a lot less cutting and taping involved.

I’ve shied away from print-at-home patterns for the most part, as well as using a computer to do my own pattern work. I don’t like cutting and taping letter-sized sheets a whole lot.  And I simply don’t have the space for a large-format plotter, like many digital pattern junkies have.

Following his recommendation in the book, I recently purchased an Epson Workforce WF-7610 printer.

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