Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Reference Materials

Life is getting in the way of sewing again (but in fun ways) so instead of a progress post, I offer book recommendations. The following are a few of my favorites:

Claire Shaeffer's Fabric Sewing Guide: It explains how to pre-treat, work with and care for anything you may encounter. It also has a burn test guide which I've found to be invaluable.

The Art of Manipulating Fabric, by Collete Wolf: Anyway to fold, smush, or alter your fabric to turn it into something completely new is in here. Some of them are more than a little wacky, but its a really fun book with good instructions.

Couture Sewing Techniques, also by Claire Shaeffer: My favorite part describes how to make a corslette and insert it into a dress. This is where I learned bound button-holes, etc. An all together excellent book. (The link is to the revised edition... I have the original. Having never seen the new one, my guess is the mid-90s images have been replaced with something a bit more modern, but I could be totally wrong)

I also have the Palmer and Alto XYZ for Real People series. They are informative, but don't go into a lot of detail after one finishes with tissue fitting. So after having read them once or twice, I find I don't really need to refer to them anymore.

The draping references I have are primarily photocopies from a class I took, and seem to have come from the February/March 2009 issues of threads magazine. (Sculpt the Silhouette by Julien Cristofoli -- I'm not finding a link) (I'm a big fan of their mini-tutorials)

of course, there are innumerable others, from the V&A collection, the Bronx museum, Paris Couture, etc.... but those are for inspiration and the joy of looking at pretty things and depend more on personal taste than anything else.

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