Category Archives: Wovens

I Made it Work

My “Make it Work” moment worked!

On a sunny Saturday afternoon, in a cozy Northern California country club with idyllic views everywhere you looked, my client Kevin beamed with pleasure as he married his beautiful bride.  Also not coincidentally, he was the best-dressed man at the event. 

A gorgeous pair of golden cufflinks handed down to him from his grandfather, together with a black satin bowtie and suspenders, finished the look of his bespoke, one-of-a-kind tuxedo shirt.  Both bride and groom were thrilled with the way our project turned out – the shirt added a personal touch to a formal outfit.  And I was thrilled too.

I won’t include wedding photos here, out of respect for the bride and groom, but I’ll illustrate how the project turned out.  I’m planning four installments to this series:

  • construction,
  • fitting,
  • reflections on the experience,
  • and finally some shirt-making tips.

Continue reading →

My First Client

I’ve been very delinquent in contributing to the blog lately, because I’ve been pouring my attention into sewing!

Part of the reason I have been so busy was Paul Gallo’s course in patternmaking and draping I took in January, plus time I spent outside the class absorbing the material.  But another reason why I’ve been so busy is that I’ve been engaged in another project, with a deadline: I’m sewing for a client.

Sewing For Others

So, first a confession of sorts.  As I’ve been developing as a sewist, I have been toying with the idea of sewing for others.

It’s part of the reason I’ve taken the long, difficult road of learning fitting and pattern alteration, rather than just tracing off a garment that already fits, or making minor alterations to a commercial pattern and hoping for the best.  I’ve wanted to develop a skill set that I could apply to others as well as myself – but to what end, I’ve never been sure.

I also knew I would have to approach sewing for others as a business, and not as a “for free” or “doing a favor” type thing.  I’ve read too many horror stories from other sewing bloggers. People think it’s easy for you to give up your time to “whip up” a quick something that they know you’ve been sitting around, just waiting to create for them.  Generally, most people are completely unaware of the amount of work that goes into creating a well-made garment, and are unappreciative of the effort.  I know a lot of other bloggers have an unstated rule that they will not sew for people who ask.

And that has also been my stance on the matter. Until now. Continue reading →

Some special deals

Sorry for the absence here – I haven’t given up my summer wardrobe project, though (predictably) summer is now almost at an end!  The first of the shirts came off the assembly line last weekend and I wore them, along with my shorts, this past week. Photos will be up here shortly.

Site Administrivia

I’ve recently run into some problems with this blog – Google has started informing me of a high error rate while indexing this site, and my hosting provider is telling me that the site is consuming too much of their resources and will suspend my account if the situation continues.

This site runs on WordPress, and though I deal with website development on a professional basis, I have close to zero interest in care and feeding of websites like this one when I’m outside work. I’d rather be sewing new projects than tweaking blogs like this one, and a big reason I chose WordPress is that it has push-button solutions for almost everything. Continue reading →

The Breakfast Club Wardrobe, Part 3: More Fabrics

OK, so I don’t have my muslins done yet.

But I did leave work quickly at 6 this evening to get to Fabric Outlet before they closed.  With 30 minutes to go, I rifled through their bolts of cotton twills and linens. I used up my limit of five swatches in search of a fabric/color selection for the second pair of pants in the Breakfast Club Wardrobe.

Herewith are the candidates, and my final selection.

Selection 1: Purple Linen

This purple linen looks smashing against the yellow and blue fabric. Against the purple shirting, it’s too matchy-matchy, but would have made a strong impression nonetheless.

IMG_1301 Continue reading →

The Orange Flannel Shirt, Part 1

Hello everyone!  I hope your holidays have been peachy keen so far.

My Black Friday Haul

In the midst of the unbelievable San Francisco Black Friday shopping crowds, I stopped at Britex Fabrics to check out their 30% off Black Friday sale.  I scored four yards of 32-inch wide Japanese-made selvedge denim at $13/yard (after discount). This will be a future ‘hipster jeans’ project.

IMG_1643 Continue reading →