Happy 2021! I have arrived into 2021 feeling renewed and full of personal hope. I am so very glad to have sewing and creativity in my life, having this stability to fall back on has been a wonderful thing for me. A place where I can go to be happy and calm and express my creativity which helps to make me a better person overall. My life has calmed down a bit since the end of 2020... Like many people "stuff" has been going on and the 2 big P's- Pandemic and Politics have not made anything easier. We sure are living through quite a bit of history. I truly hope that when we, as a collective ..read more

 Wow, what a year! I felt like I was doing so well with ALL the crap that 2020 brought to all of us and then apparently I crossed a line that broke the proverbial camels back! Adding personal issues on top of the global issues was just enough for me. I made the decision to be a bit quiet on my blog about it as I don't like to use it as a bitch fest but to use it more as a record and celebration of my sewing and creativity. CELEBRATION OF MY CREATIVITY! I love how that sounds and I am slowly getting back to feeling that way. Sewing and creating is such an important part of my life and I ha ..read more

 First off I want to say I was soooo happy this past Saturday when the election was called for Biden/Harris!! Happy Dance!!! On a Sunday afternoon a couple weeks ago my local Neighborhood Group, Sew Chicago, from the Chicago Chapter of American Sewing Guild got together for a 4 hour Zoom Sew Along. There were seven or eight of us and we started with a quick chat about what things we were each working on and then we sewed and zoomed!! Stopping periodically to chat or ask questions about something or other. It was quite fun! I decided to try this jumpsuit and I had pre-cut it ou ..read more

 One of my favorite type of workshops is a choose your own focus workshop! The type where you choose the project and what things you want to focus on learning. In Sarah Veblen’s workshops this does not mean you are just “sewing”. Time is spent learning from the other participants and working on taking another step on the journey of exploration of design and construction.  This particular workshop was 3 days long and i knew exactly what I wanted to work on! In the fall and winter I worked on perfecting the fit of a new French jacket pattern. Sadly I have given away all but one of my ..read more

The first portion of my mentorship is concentrating on Tunics. I did a bunch of sketches on my iPad using Procreate app using my Body model Croquis. I initially imported the sketch of my base pattern and used the warp function to get it to fit on my croquis. This gives me the closest representation of how the garment sketch will look on my body. Using inspirations photos that I have collected I took some time to do a bunch of sketches. When I sketch I use layers, this allows me to play with different ideas and turn things on and off. You can take each of these and save them as images whi ..read more

 Hello again!  Covid hit the household in late February which in turn kicked off my pancreatitis, anyone dealing with a chronic condition knows the challenges. We just do the very best we can! And then life happens and time passes and here we are in May with a big backlog of blogging! For lack of a better descriptor I am calling this my Blue Strappy Jacket. And I absolutely love it. It makes me happy to wear and fits wonderfully and I just had so much fun creating it. Pattern: The very base of the pattern (with many, many changes) is the shoulder princess seam jacket from Susan Kh ..read more

Just a quick post this week on a couple of finished t-shirts!  This project ended up being a little more involved at the start because I wanted to tweak the fit of my sleeve. Plus i needed to draft a new long sleeve. It is amazing to me that I am still trying to rebuild my wardrobe after losing all that weight last winter.  Here are 3 shirts and I decided to try out a new neckline. I love my got to scoop but thought I could use some variety. SO I picked up my design ruler and drafted this nice soft V neck. Loving it!! This t-shirt has gone through a ton of iterations over t ..read more

Each year I like to take a couple sewing and/or design workshops that are over several days or longer. Of course everything this year has been upended due to the pandemic. For awhile my sew-jo left me, all my plans for 2020 went out the window and I just made a whole lot of masks and then it slowly started to return. As my sew-jo returned I wanted to intentionally be creative. Not just make for the sake of making! I did a lot of thinking and pondering about what I wanted to work on in my sewing journey the second half of this year and I decided that I wanted to work on some more designing opti ..read more

As I mentioned in my last blog posts, i had another set of comfy clothes cut out and ready to go. I wanted to sew the Mile End sweatshirt and Plateau joggers up in other fabrics because I wanted to see how they fit with different knits and play with some cool fabric. Let’s start with the fun one! The Mile End sweatshirt made up in this great novelty green knit that I purchased in NYC in 2017 from Elegant Fabrics on W 36th street. I made no fit changes at all. I really like the boxy slightly cropped silhouette of this top. The shape along with the details make it feel a little more modern and ..read more

I am back with part 2 on my mini cozy, comfy collection! This blog post I will tell you about the two tops that I made to go with the matching jogger and hoodie. Boat Neck Tee Easy Fit and Sew Tank The tank top is from Jen Stern and is the Easy fit and sew tank top, view A. This tank has a great size range from 2XS to 5XL Bust from 34” to 58” and hip from 36” to 60”.  The boat neck short sleeve tee is self drafted and the boat neck portion was developed from a Sarah Veblen zoom class on boat necks. Size range- just me! The Jen Stern tank is my TNT tank top pattern. I ..read more