MetaFilter posts tagged with sewing

Swatchbook

Fiasco da Gama — Sun, 21 Mar 2021 16:09:46 -0800

The book is made of: 4 colours 16 elements 400 colour combinations 219.647 stitches.

"a miniature world, inhabited by stylish ants"

paduasoy — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 14:14:33 -0800

Ann Wood's house of fabric ants who like midcentury furniture and modern art. And their Christmas preparations. More information about making the Beaumonts and their house. And some ideas for having ideas. And, via a comment from MeFite umwhat in Ask in 2015, Ann Wood's workspace.

Textile Eye Candy

janell — Wed, 26 Aug 2020 13:19:14 -0800

CLOTH#20 is 2020's online offering of an annual textile makers and designers exhibit and sale. Just barely international, but mostly Scottish, the exibition showcases 50 craftspeople and designers. You can ogle the goods and some demo videos from the main page, or click through to individual maker websites.

she's a sewing machine mechanic

aniola — Wed, 06 May 2020 22:42:51 -0800

What To Check Before Taking Your Machine To The Shop

Asks for masks

anshuman — Wed, 25 Mar 2020 11:45:39 -0800

These medical facilities are requesting masks. Instructions here for simple masks, here (pattern here) for the kind that takes a filter. (Hepa filters apparently work - also these.) Joann's is donating fabric (shipped or curbside, at some stores - contact info at link), and also taking in finished products.

Embroidery tattoos: needle work of needlework

not_the_water — Mon, 17 Feb 2020 17:09:17 -0800

People Are Getting Colorful Tattoos That Look Like Embroidery on Skin (My Modern Met): "From thread painting to freestyle, stitchers have a lot of choices when it comes to making images with thread. Embroidery tattoos feature two predominant methods that are inspired by the ancient practice: cross stitch and crewel. The cross stitch tattoo, first made popular by Eva Karabudak, has designs formed by tiny "X" marks, while the crewel approach mimics the satin stitch on the skin." Brazil's Duda Lozano is the the master of the patch tattoo. More: Embroidery Tattoos Are Taking Over, And They're Too Elaborate For Words (Revelist). Unless specified all links are to the artist's Instagram.

The Warmth of Beauty, the Beauty of Warmth

MonkeyToes — Sat, 21 Dec 2019 16:41:20 -0800

"Parkas have been here for centuries. And now people around the world are starting to clue into what Northerners have always known: if you want to stay warm, there's nothing better than a northern parka." Jessica Davey-Quantick's "The Art and Science of Staying Warm" (Canada's Up Here) explores the great beauty and utility of handmade parkas. "Karen Wright-Fraser flips over the hem of a parka to show the underside of the embroidered trim, where the tiny stitches that went into creating this example of Delta Braid are barely visible. "It's like pieces and pieces of bias tape, with little tiny pieces folded under, they make beautiful designs," she says. She's the community liaison coordinator at the [Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre], and also a seamstress. "The techniques were pretty much forgotten," she says. That's changing. She's seeing an upswing of people re-learning the skills their grandmothers had. "The young people, a lot of them weren't interested before, now I notice that a lot of them are picking things up because they're seeing beautiful things on Facebook. And they're going to their grannies and learning. They're having pride," she says. Even more are learning online, and going to online groups for support and help. "There are so many different ways, then you choose the way that works for you! You're finding your own path.""

Clever Seamstressing

crush — Wed, 30 Oct 2019 19:54:50 -0800

18th Century Dresses From Ikea Textiles. Apparently, Ikea has a history of reproducing 18th century textiles. And, since it can be difficult to find modern natural-fiber fabrics in prints that feel historically accurate, costumers use them to make dresses. American Duchess offers her advice on selecting your fabric from Ikea home furnishings here.

Attaching Doll Hair

Eyebrows McGee — Sat, 14 Sep 2019 19:48:56 -0800

The machine. The full doll-making process from 1968 (this valley, it is uncanny), from 1963 (very similar). Anna from Frozen gets hair. Barbie gets hair. Large-scale Barbie gets two-tone hair. Another small-scale fashion doll gets hair.

You can automate a lot of things. Sewing isn't one of them.

bitteschoen — Mon, 02 Sep 2019 04:11:32 -0800

This is your occasional reminder that robots can't sew clothes, and that every garment you own - yes, even that $5 t-shirt - was stitched together by a person. [Twitter thread — view on Threadreader] Some highlights:

The ubiquity of clothing makes it easy not to think about how the garments got there, where they came from. Sewing machines need to be operated by skilled people. The variables inherent in sewing -- the quality of the fabric, the type of thread/stitching required, the applications of trims, etc. -- is why commercial clothing production can't be done by robots. ...I'd like to follow this with the occasional reminder that sewing is high skill work. Sewing is generally assumed to be low skill because women do it, and most of the women doing it professionally aren't white. ...[A] good way of starting to understand the clothing manufacturing process is through NPR's Planet Money T-Shirt project. It's a good introduction to the mass market garment industry.

...garment creation is an industry that has proven impossible to automate. Human intuition and dexterity when it coming to manipulating fabrics is difficult to program efficiently for a variety of reasons: 1. The variables of fabrics are vast. Fabrics have different levels of stretch, thickness and weaves. Fabrics can crease, fabrics can fold and there is often imperfections and pulls that occur. 2. The garments being manufactured change frequently. Two words: Fast Fashion. H&M and Forever21 both get DAILY shipments of new styles. With each new style, an automated sewing machine would need to be programed with a new set of rules. 3. The movements required to fabricate are complex. While sewing you are often pulling or easing the fabric. Pieces of fabric have to be lined up perfectly or panels won't match, buttons and holes won't align and even something as simple as a zipper won't work

Planet Money podcast – Episode 715: The Sewing Robot (NPR, 2016)

Robots can build cars. They can vacuum your house. Robots can even write news articles. But getting a robot to sew clothes has proven surprisingly difficult. It is a task that is still done almost entirely by people sitting at sewing machines--pretty much how it has worked for decades and decades. Building a sewing robot is something of a frontier for automation.

Is This Sewing Robot The Future Of Fashion? (FastCompany, 2017)

[Experts see] numerous obstacles in overhauling current industry trends—namely, that apparel production, especially for fast fashion, requires expensive machinery and timely delivery at a very low price. With such challenging margins, companies are forced to seek out the lowest wages possible and are unlikely to invest in new technology.

The Case for Letting Robots Make Our Clothes (Motherboard/Vice, 2017)

There are technological limitations to most of the automated "sewbots" on the market right now. [...] machines ... can't do the nimble work of seamstresses when it comes to fancy outfits that have frills and layers of lace. And some of the baubles and additions to clothing can't be done by a standardized machine. Robots would also fall short in a garment factory since most current machines can only handle specific kinds of materials, not the variety of leather and suede and linen that comprise our market... Cutting different materials would require different devices, whether it's cutting with pressurized water or blades. ...there's already technology that could make t-shirts and other simple garments, but we're not close to replacing human garment labor altogether given the diversity of our designs.

Clothes company backs humans over sewing robots (Financial Times, 2018 - summary of article here)

The march of the robots may be slower than feared: at least on the production lines in emerging markets. The world's biggest maker of clothes is betting on human workers rather than automation as it seeks to win more contracts from clients such as Marks and Spencer, Uniqlo and H&M. Crystal Group, which recently raised $490m in an initial public offering in Hong Kong, said sewing robots could not compete on cost with human labour in developing countries. [Crystal Group CEO] said innovations such as the Sewbot, designed by Softwear Automation of the US, were "interesting" and would cause disruption. But he did not foresee early-stage sewing robots competing with human labour in low-cost countries in the near future.

You literally cannot mess this up

soelo — Tue, 19 Feb 2019 09:19:15 -0800

How we Lost our Ability to Mend [clothes] from Die, Workwear!, "A semi-daily blog about classic men's tailoring and semi-casual attire."

Classical Art & Real-Life Doppelgänger

Lexica — Mon, 03 Dec 2018 17:06:48 -0800

In which costumer and historical sewing enthusiast Bernadette Banner recreates the dress from Jacques-Louis David's "Portrait of a Young Woman in White": Making a Regency-Bodied petticoat. Making the gown. Bringing the portrait to life.

Sew Profane

MonkeyToes — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 18:57:28 -0800

Meet the Profanity Embroidery Group: How a sweary stitching group is helping women through loss, loneliness, and rage (metro.co.uk). But is it safe for work? NOPE. How did the group come about? "About 25 years ago, I sent a Rina Piccolo cartoon to my mother. 18 months or so ago, it fell out of one of her embroidery books, and she returned it to me. It made me laugh so hard when I saw it, that I promptly shared it to my Facebook page. It struck a chord with so many friends that within a matter of hours, our first Profanity Embroidery Group meeting. The cartoon is of a sweet old lady embroidering hearts and flowers and 'fuck the world': the title was 'Mrs Winchester finds a positive outlet for frustrated negative energy.'" This is from one of its founders, the embroiderer Annie Taylor; link contains more art. Additional images are available at PEG's Facebook page. Podcast--Stitchery Stories, Ep. 023: "Today on the Stitchery Stories textile art podcast, Annie Taylor & Bridget Carpenter share their hilarious stories around their 'rather different' embroidery group – yes, it's the Profanity Embroidery Group. Formed by accident in 2014, and meeting in the local pub, this group has huge fun. They create and exhibit beautiful textile art and embroidery based around profanity, as well as some feminist issues. Their current project however, features anonymous Stitched Secrets that have been sent in from around the world. Some funny, some shocking, some very moving." All glory to Rumple for providing the inspiration for this post.

Quilting is fun! Row by row, or as a big, ugly sleeping bag

filthy light thief — Sat, 14 Jul 2018 12:23:53 -0800

Do you like to travel AND sew? Great! Row by Row Experience is an annual collaboration between quilting shops in the U.S., Canada, and some locations in England, Scotland, Germany, and the Netherlands with an annual theme to unify designs, available in four different shapes. There are also some patterns available online and mail-order from past years. Or if you already have surplus fabric, old blankets, or any cloth, you can make an ugly quilt sleeping bag for the Sleeping Bag Project to help the homeless (existing groups are in the U.S., but you can start your own, or maybe just do your own thing).

putting boning in a binder

sciatrix — Wed, 04 Jul 2018 10:49:28 -0800

THINGS I NEED TO FUCKING KNOW: Why every fuckin trans man or nb person I know who binds is like "oh binders are the worst, you can't breathe in them, I know someone who broke a rib once". And meanwhile over in historical costuming, we are fucking eating, sleeping, swordfighting, riding horses, and feeling great in smooth-bodiced corsets. What if the secret to making a better binder is to add boning? What might be possible?

Handmade heritage

infini — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 04:33:06 -0800

The stories from Atharna's project to document and archive Middle Eastern crafts are now up on their website: portraits of artisans and skilled craftspeople, from Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, Egypt and the countries of the Gulf. via

Have You Seen This Fabric?

jedicus — Mon, 04 Dec 2017 09:43:49 -0800

Since 1999, Missing Fabrics has offered a free*, crowd-sourced service for locating hard-to-find fabrics for quilters, upholsterers, and other crafters who need just a little more fabric in order to complete a project. It is also a glorious example of early web design and community. * If you can't provide your own picture then there is a charge of $1 to scan a swatch.

Biscornu? I hardly know you!

soelo — Thu, 30 Nov 2017 09:36:31 -0800

How to Make Biscornu Make a complicated looking octagonal pincushion out of two simple squares. They can be made with embroidered or plain fabric and you can add a button in the middle to make it look more like a ~~doughnut biscuit~~ spaceship. Biscornu is a French term that means 'bizarre' or crooked.

This post is so sew.

Room 641-A — Tue, 24 Oct 2017 11:36:42 -0800

Sometimes I find a thing that is not in my wheelhouse but I think will be of interest to my fellow mefites. This is one of those posts. Open Culture has compiled an Online Trove of Historic Sewing Patterns & Costumes. They all appear to be free to download, including the very cool looking Custom Corset Pattern Generator. Enjoy!

My kid could do that! Oh, wait, no. Never mind.

Room 641-A — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 13:13:02 -0800

Callum Donovan-Grujicich is an twelve year-old artist who lives in Whitby, Ontario with his parents, his younger brother and his beloved dog Jiggs. From about the time he was learning to walk, Callum showed a strong inclination towards expressing himself through art, preferably in three dimensions. At the age of ten he began experimenting with the creation of art dolls and has been passionately constructing them ever since. They are made from a variety of materials, including paper clay, wire armature, acrylic paint, fabric, stuffing and various found objects. He hand sews all the clothes.

VIRTUE AND DEVOTION

the man of twists and turns — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 09:24:42 -0800

What Sewing Samplers Tell Us About Women's Lives from the 17th to 19th Centuries.
The Fitzwilliam Museum's exhibit Sampled Lives exhibition shows how samplers (needlework training and practice) hold hidden messages in symbolism and contain clues of the lives of women and girls who made them. You can even buy reproduction kits. American Needlework in the Eighteenth Century A Brief History of Embroidery Samplers A stitch in time: Research looks at old samplers in new ways Six Samplers in the National Archives, Part 1

Martha Earl is my/ name Hackensack is/ my station Heaven/ is my dwelling [place]/ And Christ is my [sal/v]ation When I [am]/ dead and in my grav/ - e and all my bones/ are rotten For/ this you sea remem/ber me That I are/ not forgottin/ She was born August/ 1 AD 1781 ABCDEFGHI

Thrifted Transformations

capricorn — Wed, 12 Jul 2017 12:31:34 -0800

Thrifted Transformations is a YouTube series by April aka coolirpa, and it is all about transforming thrift shop clothes (and sometimes not-clothes) into entirely new creations. (See also ReFashionista, previously on MeFi.)

Come for the weaving, stay for the hedgehog washing

jacquilynne — Mon, 29 May 2017 22:54:57 -0800

Tien Chiu is a textile artist, a writer, a person of colour, someone with bipolar disorder, a semi-pro chocolatier, and the creator of her own museum-quality wedding dress. The link above summarizes the wedding dress project, but if you want to see how it happened, including how the project started before she even had a wedding planned to wear it to, the dyeing, the sampling, the restarts, the hemming, and the drinking, her blog on the dress was extensive. Plus, she made the wedding favors out of the excess fabric, because why not? Her dress project isn't recent so if you follow weaving, you might already have seen it, but I only recently discovered it, and it is just such an amazing project that I wanted to share. Hedgehog washing, as promised by the post title.

Best in Fashion, Make it Yours

crush — Wed, 05 Apr 2017 06:37:55 -0800

The Vintage Pattern Wiki is a collaborative dedicated to Vintage Sewing Patterns (25 years old or older) and well worth browsing through for how some styles rarely change dramatically and how some things really do. Currently it lists over 83,500 patterns from companies you probably recognize (Vogue, Burda, Butterick, McCall/McCall's) and ones you may not (Academy Patterns, ABC Schnitt, Pictorial Review). And lots of Mail Order Companies. Not sure about those vintage fabric suggestions (Barathea? Vicara? Poor boy?)? The Vintage Fashion Guild has got you covered.

Sewing, Blogging and Feeling Fabulous

jacquilynne — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 07:06:53 -0800

The Curvy Sewing Collective is a group blog that addresses the particular needs of curvy sewists. From pattern reviews and comparisons to tutorials on the kinds of fit adjustments that are often required for curvy garments to inspirational monthly roundups of garments completed by readers, the site aims to be a comprehensive resource for curvy women (whether plus-size or straight size) who sew for themselves. They've done theme months on lingerie, swimwear and shirtmaking. Now, for Pants month, they've published a list of every plus-size pants pattern available.