Every few weeks somebody emails me the same question, always slightly embarrassed, as though it were a silly thing to ask. It is not. The question is this: what is canvas, and is duck cloth the same thing or something different? If you have stood at a cutting counter with … Continue reading
Welcome back to the question behind this series: does spending more on a tool make you sew better, faster, or just happier? Today it is thread snips, the little cutters that live beside the machine and get picked up forty times an hour. They are the cheapest tool I have … Continue reading
Traditional Japanese clothing looks simple from the outside and turns out to be anything but. Most of us picture a kimono and stop there, but the kimono is only the most recent chapter of a very long story. Let us take it in order, from the first woven cloth made … Continue reading
A tissue box sits out on a side table all December, so it may as well look like it belongs there. This cover slips over a standard upright tissue box and takes an evening to make: applique trees on red cotton, white ric rac for snow, and a ric rac … Continue reading
If you have ever stood in a fabric shop holding a bolt of something glossy, with a raised floral motif that shifts as you tilt it, and wondered what on earth you were looking at, there is a very good chance it was jacquard fabric. There is an equally good … Continue reading
Welcome back to the question under this whole series: does paying more for a sewing tool actually make you sew better, or just feel better at the till? I have hedged before. Not this time. Sewing thread is the strongest case in the series for spending the money, and not … Continue reading
Traditional Russian clothing began, for almost everyone who wore it, with a length of homespun linen. Flax grew across northern and central Russia for millennia, and turning it into cloth was women’s work. The Museum of Russian Art records that a skilled spinner needed a full day to make 350 … Continue reading
Making a pair of fleece winter gloves is not just a matter of tracing your hand on a piece of paper or drawing straight onto the fabric. Believe me, I have actually tried this before and it makes for very uncomfortable gloves… To save you this exercise in trial and … Continue reading
Sateen confuses more sewists than almost any other cotton. It looks a little like satin, it is spelled almost like satin, and plenty of shop labels use the two words as though they were interchangeable. They are not. So what is sateen? It is a fabric woven so the weft … Continue reading
Every tool in this series gets the same question. Does spending more actually make you sew better, sew faster, or just enjoy it more? Some tools have earned their price with me. Others turned out to be the same lump of metal in a nicer package. This week it is … Continue reading
Traditional Scandinavian clothing is one of the few folk dress traditions in Europe that never quite turned into fancy dress. Walk through Oslo on the seventeenth of May and you will see thousands of people in bunad, the Norwegian regional festival costume, worn to a national holiday the way an … Continue reading
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