As some of you know, I’ve been writing articles for the American sewing magazine Sew News , for the past year and a half. So far I’ve written about eight articles, and have had one of my projects featured on a cover last spring, which was really cool. Last year, I appeared on their PBS TV show, Sew It All, to talk about leather sewing techniques. Flying out to Colorado to shoot the segment was nerve wracking but a lot of fun, and I still haven’t watched my show! I’ve always been really weird about seeing myself on film, even when I was acting in bit parts.
This month’s edition, Dec./ Jan. 2016, of Sew News features my leather pink skirt I wore on the blog last year. The article goes over all the techniques I talked about on the show, and has a link to a free download of this pattern I drafted specifically for leather, It has panels to allow the sewer to use smaller pieces of leather since it’s often hard to get a big panel of leather with some hides. There is a free download of the skirt available until January 31, 2016. You can go to the Sew It All page. I can’t vouch for how the download pattern prints out, since I only sent them a physically drafted version of my pattern drawn on paper. I’m old school, and make my patterns the traditional way I learned in school before they taught CAD, by draping first, then drafting with a ruler and pencil, and hand grading with a ruler. It takes forever, but I tried to learn Illustrator, but I just couldn’t wrap my head around it! I did grade the pattern myself, it goes from about size 2 to 14 in ready to wear sizes. If you go any bigger, you really need to draft another block.
This month’s addition also has an article I wrote for them on adding a dart to a dartless pattern and how to pivot it out of the armhole to a different spot. Writing for a magazine is totally different from writing for my blog. It’s much more formal sounding than my more casual style here.
I love this whole outfit on you! The skirt is lovely and since I’ve never sewn leather (and would love to!) I’ll watch your show. Thank you for sharing your experience and finished product.