While we were relaxing in the Loire Valley in France a few weeks ago, I took the opportunity to hit up some of the big hypermarchés’ magazine sections and flip through all the sewing magazines! I saw the usual suspects like Burda, Elena Couture, and Fait Main but also a fair amount of new(ish) ones, too. I was unimpressed by the several magazines which simply reprint Big Four patterns (I understand the economics, but I’m not tempted in the slightest), but excited to see Fashion Style (the French language version of KnipMode, which I’ll share in a future post), and also Couture Actuelle, the French language version of Patrones, and of course, La Maison Victor!
La Maison Victor magazine – Sept/Oct 2017
James’s black velvet tee
Just before we went to France a few weeks ago, James expressed a desire for a black velvet teeshirt with a V-neck and 3/4 length sleeves, but lamented that he wasn’t finding any in the shops and asked if I could make him one. He specifically said that he loved the way the grey Paxson I made for him last winter fits, and when I offered to fix the few shoulder/neckline issues in it, he said he liked it that way, so I left the pattern as-is apart from turning the round neck into a V and shortening the sleeves.
GBSB Live – What an Event!
Wow, what an event! We hosted our first ever stall at the Great British Sewing Bee Live at Excel in London this week, and it was a blast. I’d never sold anything in person before, let alone filled a space, so it was a huge learning curve, but the event went by in a bit of a blur!
The GBSB Live and storewide sale
If you had told me from the start that buying my first ever stall at an expo would require so much time, effort, stress and money, I’m not sure I would’ve ever said yes in the first place. But back when the Great British Sewing Bee Live event was announced, I was tempted, talked it over with J, and decided to go for it and stretch myself as a small business owner.
It’s been a huge learning process, even just moving from a purely digital business into one that not only has to fill a space (which the organisers kept making bigger!) but also taking in-person card transactions, and ordering supplies to try and really show off what Fehr Trade Patterns really is to someone just walking past who may have never heard of us. If you’re coming along, we’re on stall H1 (turn left once you enter, and I’m in the corner with the workshop rooms).
The show is finally upon us, and hopefully now the panic attacks and stress and dwindling bank balance can give way to the enjoyment of meeting new people and putting faces to long-time customers’ names, too. But if I don’t manage to get a pattern released this calendar year, we can definitely point a blame finger in the show’s general direction as much as the book’s!
Burda magazine September 2017
I’ll be honest with you – I wasn’t expecting to review this issue. I’ve subscribed to Burda for years now (and bought sporadically before that), but I’ve been increasingly been disgusted by their wasting an entire issue on dirndl dresses every September, which are a waste of my money, tbh. So when I got a notice that my subscription was ending with July’s issue, I thought “a-ha! I’ll outsmart you this year, Burda! I’ll buy August on the newsstand, skip your awful Dirndlpalooza issue, then re-subscribe with October!”
So I bought August (which was the best issue of the issue so far IMHO!), and then I tip-toed to the newsstand on my lunch hour last week to look through September… and no dirndls! Hurrah! A regular issue for September for the first time in at least five years! (Seriously though, if you want to sew your own dirndl, more power to you, there are loads on Burda’s site to help you with that.) I’ll still probably buy October from my newsstand just in case, but I think we might’ve escaped with much more usable patterns this year, hurrah!
Cycling Jeans No3
When you find yourself literally patching the patches on your first pair of cycling jeans, it’s the world’s way of telling you that you need to drop everything and make a replacement pair ASAP. Since I started cycling to work in January 2016, I’ve found my own balance of form and function to make cycle commuting work with my casual office. Since my commutes have only ever been 30-35min, it’s not really worth cycling in full lycra, so I tend to wear whatever bottoms I’d plan on wearing at the office (unless the forecast is wet, in which case I do wear lycra & pack a full change of clothes in my backpack).
Three woven shell tops
A few months ago it occurred to me that I had a lot of 1 metre cuts of woven fabrics languishing in my stash and that I’d really like to have a good, basic shell top pattern in my arsenal to turn these into wearable woven tees or tanks to wear with jeans or skirts. So it was excellent timing when Colette Patterns re-released their free Sorbetto pattern, and I thought I’d give it a try.
The Sewing Weekender 2017
Sewing retreats are fairly common in America from what I can tell, but up until last year’s inaugural Sewing Weekender, there’d never really been a large scale sewing retreat here in the UK. I was lucky enough to snag a ticket for myself last year, and I had SUCH a great time as a punter that I knew I wanted to go again should Rachel, Kate, and Charlotte plan another one.
Luckily, out of the writing of my book I realised that a lot of the points I made about sewing activewear were also heavily applicable to anyone with a body who moves (so, err, everyone except possibly the comatose) so I approached the organisers months ago saying I’d love to talk about Sewing For Movement at the next event if they were planning one. I’m glad I got in touch early, because as it turns out, this year’s Weekender sold out in under 20 minutes!!
Burda magazine August 2017
oh. my. gorgeousness! Are you ready for, what’s in my humble opinion, the best Burda issue of the year, or possibly even the past few years? Seriously, there are SO many patterns in here that I want to make immediately that I can hardly stand it! In my eyes, I’d have to go back to the Japanese-style feature in June 2014 to find as many designs I’m utterly crazy about! But don’t take my word for it – let’s show you some of my picks!
The Great British Sewing Bee Live – come join me!
If you’ve not heard the news yet, the hit BBC tv show The Great British Sewing Bee is being reincarnated as a live event here in London in September! Having worked behind the scenes on the last two seasons of the show, I knew how much love and work went into every challenge and every episode of the show and I immediately got in touch with the organisers the second the live event was announced.