This is a place for myself (Hef) and my partner is stitching crime (Ange) to post about the stuff we have made, patterns we have scored, and hopefully be able to link into and get advice from a wider community of sewers than we currently have.
So a little about us:
That's Ange in the Pink and I am Hef, in the red, obviously.
I did sewing at school, and despite having a mother who sewed really well and made the costumes for the dance school, to put it frankly I sucked and I hated it, dropped it as soon as I was able and did not touch it again until I was about 20.
A friend of mine, who is an awesome sewer, agreed to "help" me make some garb for an SCA event. I often got my mothers "help" on things I wanted sewn, but this friend of mine had a very different view of helping me. Not accepting here's the fabric hand me the garment method of help my mother had often gave I found myself once again behind the evil sewing machine, and what do you know the in the 5 year gap I had gotten much more coordinated, I could even do a straight seam.
Since then I haven't stopped, I have a wardrobe full of costumes in all variety of concept, renaissance to fantasy, Victorian to Elizabethan. Lets just say I went a little nuts on sewing costumes. It wasn't an entire waste though, being a LARPer I had place to use these costumes. Eventually I was sewing costumes for up to 7 people at a time for roleplaying convention weekends.
Left is just a small sampling of one such event. (I am sitting in the centre and Ange is the far right) At this one in particular there were 7 pirate costumes and 7 victorian costumes to finish in about 3 months. As you can assume I required a LOT of help to get this stuff done and most of that help came in the form of the girls in that picture (known as the Girlsquad).Whilst I did most of the actual sewing Ange got into the begininng steps of sewing, tracing, cutting and pinning for me and found that she enjoyed it. Enjoying it so much so that she decided to begin makeing stuff of her own.
I had never branched out of costumes for two reasons. The first it that I did not have enough skill (I thought) to actually wear anything I had made myself and not look special. Secondly and this was the big issue at the end, costume allowed me a lot of creative license. Trims, fancy finishes, nothing was going to be "to much" on the finished product, where as modern clothing meant boring to me.
And so it was Ange my dutiful apprentice that pushed the limits and decided to branch herself into "wearable" clothing, though not the traditional modern patterns, but developed a keen interest in vintage styles, specifically the 1950's. Downloading a pattern from the internet she set out to create a dress on her own, without my guidance, in a 1950's style and this was the beginning of our adventures into vintage land.
So where does that leave us now, with collectively about 5 boxes of vintage patterns, an awesome wardrobe of vintage replica clothing and many a fun sewing day.
So here is a small profile for you:
Name - Hef
Favourite Era - Tie between 1940's and 1960's for everyday and 1920's and 1930's for evening
Sewing Specialty - Fast, with a mind for fixing problems as they arise
Sewing downfall - Things have a tendancey to not look professional due to the not following patterns properly. There is always something wrong with everything I make as I am sure you will come to know.
Name - Ange
Favourite Era - 1950's all the way
Sewing Specialty - Precise and Neat, working slowly through a pattern and unpicking when necessary to get a proper result.
Sewing downfall - A bit to much of a perfectionist and planning ahead can be a problem, otherwise a lack of general experience, I have only been at this for a few years.
For a full story of Anges history in the world of sewing bug her with comments.
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