I've always kept my threads and sewing tools in a tackle box. Don't laugh -- there are precious things in it. For instance, in the top drawer you can see my great-grandmother's silver thimble, and a sealskin thimble brought to me by my niece from Sitka, Alaska, where she did a writer's residency. In the lower drawer are several spools of silk thread that were my mother-in-law's, and a package of hand-sewing needles bought in Mexico City. If I look closely, I think I also see a bell that was on our first cat's collar.
The sewing I've been doing this summer started as an experiment. As in my food choices, I've wanted to become more conscious of where our clothing comes from, who our dollars support or hurt, its environmental impact, and how the industry operates. I am neither a purist nor a crusader: I've bought plenty of clothes at Zara, H&M, Gap, Old Navy, and many other clothing companies that use offshore manufacturing. But like my friend K., who writes the blog Passage des Perles, I do shop at thrift stores, and am becoming more and more unwilling to support the fast-fashion industry, distressed by its reduced fabric quality and construction, and underwhelmed by the styles as well as their positioning to a much younger consumer. I also didn't want to spend $200-$300 on just one or two items at local boutiques run by Quebec designers. For that amount of money, I wondered what I could actually make myself, and whether or not I'd be happy with the result. I've enjoyed sewing clothes my entire life, but haven't done much in the past ten or fifteen years ago, partly because of the decline of local fabric stores selling high-quality fabrics for apparel. (Montreal still has several quilting, upholstery, and costume-fabric stores.) What I've learned over the past month of research and sewing has been enlightening, so I wanted to share it. I'll divide the following list into two parts, spread over two blog posts, and try to make it interesting for the non-sewers as well.
- Motivation
- Inspiration
- Planning
- Acquiring patterns and materials
- Construction
- Economics - total cost, and comparison to ready-made
- Quality
- Satisfaction
- Future Plans
OK! Let's get started!
Motivation
When we moved to this apartment a year ago, I got rid of everything in my closet that I wasn't wearing regularly. If the items were still in good shape, I donated them to local thrift shops, and the rest I recycled or threw out, except for a few beautiful handknit sweaters that I gave to friends. I had been holding onto garments that were twenty and thirty years old, so this was a real purge, long overdue. The biggest hole it created was for summer clothes: when spring came this year, I realized I didn't have much besides jeans and tee shirts, a few tops, one pair of linen pants, and a few special-occasion dresses and long skirts.
So, I did some shopping...and I wasn't happy with what I found. Not only did the clothes seem expensive, but even in higher-end fast-fashion stores like Zara and Mango, I was disappointed in the uneven quality of the fabrics, the lack of natural fibers, and the cheap construction. Uniqlo was better, but I wasn't really in the market for basics. I buy my jeans at Old Navy, but most of their other clothes tend to be cheap imports in synthetic fabrics. I was looking for linen, or linen-cotton blends. I also checked thrift and vintage stores, where I've found a number of treasures in the past, but didn't find anything this time around.
Inspiration
Since I follow a lot of sewing and knitting sites on Instagram, and had been searching online, of course I began to get ads for linen clothing and fabrics. After reading a lot of reviews in early spring, I did order a pure linen asymmetrical skirt and a matching top from a direct-to-consumer fashion company called Grae Cove that sells simply-designed linen dresses, skirts, tops and pants. The headquarters are in California and Hong Kong, the factories are Chinese, and -- for what it's worth -- the company has both a sustainability statement and clearly stated policies about ethical workplace conditions and compensation, though I had no way to really check. (It is true that linen and wool both have lower environmental impact than cotton or synthetics.) Anyway, the items I ordered arrived quickly and were well made, at a good price, in high-quality fabric in a beautiful color. The skirt fit perfectly and I've worn it all summer. But the top, for which I had used their size guide, was way too large and boxy. I didn't want to return it, and figured eventually I'd cut it apart or see if I could alter it to fit. But the main message I got from that order was that I should try making simple clothes like these myself, spending my own time doing something that - for me anyway - is fun and constructive. Since I hadn't sewn in a while, I was a little unsure how it would go, but when I found excellent quality linen online, I got inspired, and took the plunge. I also did a lot of pattern-shopping online among independent designers and small companies that I'm happy to support, as well as acquiring the two Japanese sewing books I mentioned in an earlier post.
Planning and Acquisition
The linen, linen blends, and rayon fabrics I ordered were with specific projects and patterns in mind, and I had a few pieces in my stash as well. I wanted to make one or two dresses, a jumpsuit, a couple of new tops, and at least one pair of pants. First, I studied the pattern specifications carefully, since patterns almost always suggest the most suitable types and weights of fabric, and tried to match my fabric choices with those. Buying fabric online is tricky because you can't feel it, or hold a length in your hand to test the drape, or hold it up to the light to see how opaque or transparent it is -- and all of these things are important. It's even hard to judge the scale of printed or woven designs, which is why online stores often include a ruler in one of the photos of the fabrics they're offering. I'm an experienced sewer, but it still makes me nervous to buy fabric this way: cut lengths of fabric are not returnable! Fortunately, my choices worked out pretty well.
I also live within a five-minute walk from the local Fabricville (a Canadian equivalent for JoAnn Fabrics in the US), where I rarely find fabric I love, but can get every conceivable notion from elastic and interfacing to extra sewing machine bobbins.
There was a learning curve for a Brother sewing machine I was given by K.; I wanted to use it for these projects but only after sewing test swatches and becoming quite familiar with it. There were definitely things to learn, both by reading the manual and by trial and error, so that took a fair amount of time. Sewing has also evolved in recent years: I'm still finding out about the newest fabric markers, next-generation fusible interfacings and seam stabilizers, as well as getting used to printing out .pdf patterns bought online or tracing the ones in the backs of sewing books, adding seam allowances, making alterations, and setting up a system for storing them.
Construction
Then it was time to cut! I'm in a new space, without the big tables of my former studio, but to my surprise it's turned out that this small workroom is the most efficient sewing space I've ever had. The table for the sewing machine and the work table form an L, and across from the machine I have the ironing board, so everything is within a few steps. I did most of the cutting on the floor, which reminded me of being in high school, when Mom and I always cut our patterns on the carpeted dining room floor. The difference is that my body is many decades older, and this was a bit hard on my back and knees after a while -- but I figured it was good for me ;-)
The actual sewing went pretty well. I had self-drafted a top in two hemline variations copied from an existing favorite, originally from H&M. For the rest of the projects, I had chosen pretty simple patterns without fussy tailoring details. The only difficulties were in the somewhat minimal Japanese instructions, which definitely required some prior knowledge of sewing, and figuring out their unfamiliar fitting methods of folding and draping fabric, but I was both intrigued and impressed with the clarity of the pictures and instructions for all of these patterns. For Paper Theory's "Zadie" jumpsuit and "Block Tee" I also found numerous helpful notes online that other sewers had written as they made their garments, along with YouTube instructions that helped with things like making neat bias bindings for the v-necks of my self-drafted tops. The internet is a godsend for do-it-yourselfers, and I was grateful for the help there, which has now replaced the voluminous instructions on the Vogue patterns I grew up with, and my late grandmother's expertise when I would get stuck.
In the next post, I'll assess what I ended up with after this sewing blitz: the quantity and quality of the garments, and whether or not it was worth it to spend my money and time in this way.
This inspires me to take my sewing machine in for maintenance. For years, I've only used it for mending. It's not working well these days. Between the ages of 25 and 28, I was employed as an industrial sewing machine operator, a year sewing for Columbia Sportswear followed by a year sewing backpacks and then a year working in a sailmaking shop. After sewing all day long, five days a week for three years, I lost all desire to sew at home.
It would be a joy now to make clothing for myself as you are doing.
Wonderful use of a tackle box!
Posted by: am | July 25, 2023 at 12:57 PM