C Sews

Hey, I made it to Week 3 of Me Made May 2013! As I mentioned in my previous post (“My Unofficial Me Made May Participation: Weeks 1 and 2“), I’m unofficially participating in this handmade wearable challenge.  So far I’ve only had one repeat – wearing my red hat twice. But I think I’ll be [...]

Last week, I wrote about tracing patterns (see “Tips on Tracing Sewing Patterns“). In that post I was going to include some of my thoughts on the sewing patterns I’ve traced over the past few months but it got too long. So here’s my brief review, which covers patterns from three books: Alabama Studio Sewing [...]

Over the past few months I’ve been hand sewing, not machine sewing, which has a very different feel. When I’m sewing on a machine, I want to have blocks of time to work. I want an uninterrupted five or six hours minimum to sew, iron, snip, etc. But when you sew with a needle and [...]

In October I began embroidering a wrap featured in Natalie Chanin’s book Alabama Studio Sewing + Design (see my post “Getting Started on My “Alabama Fur” Wrap“). After a few evenings and about 15 hours of stitching spirals on this black jersey knit fabric, I realized that I was making spirals on the so-called wrong [...]

When I got my copy of Natalie Chanin’s Alabama Studio Sewing + Design, which I reviewed in September, I was all fired up to make a wrap embroidered with spirals, or what designer Natalie Chanin calls “Alabama fur.” The “fur” is created by leaving one-inch tails of embroidery floss on the right side of your fabric. [...]

I love the public library. It’s a great source of free information for everyone. It’s also a wonderful place to check out new sewing books. Right now I’ve got five books out, four from the Berkeley Public Library and one from the San Francisco Public Library. I flip through the books to see how many [...]

I recently checked out this great book on hand sewing from the public library: Alabama Studio Sewing + Design: A Guide to Hand-Sewing an Alabama Chanin Wardrobe by Natalie Chanin. It focuses on creating a hand-sewn wardrobe – yes, everything from bolero jackets and wraps to dresses and skirts of varying lengths – from cotton jersey fabric. [...]