Publishing Day! A Year of Zero Waste Sewing

Today is publishing day for A Year of Zero Waste Sewing, a book I started two years ago and experimentally published in instalments as zines. It’s now a proper book. It explores zero waste patterncutting concepts, making clothes for longevity, my own opinionated thoughts on various sewing topics, and stories from zero waste designers. Fashion…

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8 Glorious Years of Blogging

The Craft of Clothes blog has just clicked over 8 years. 375 posts, 666,379 views, 316,690 visitors and 2300 comments. My very first blog post had 6 visitors! I knew them all. They were: my mum, brother, best friend from high school, her mother, the website man and a family friend who I mentioned it…

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Creating the cover for A Year of Zero Waste Sewing

One of the really fun parts of independent publishing is making the book’s cover. The cover for A Year of Zero Waste Sewing was finished this past week. The cover was created by Stu Nankivell, who has done the covers for my previous two books, and styled by me. Several weeks ago, Stu and his…

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Crafting a Book: A Year of Zero Waste Sewing

Things are coming together as A Year of Zero Waste Sewing moves towards becoming a book. I thought I’d use this post to share the process of independently publishing a book. 10 years ago, I was determined I would never self-publish, but now I’m a convert! If you have something to write about, it’s never…

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How to adjust a zero waste pattern

It’s not always easy to do an adjustment on a zero waste sewing pattern. This is because the whole cutting layout IS the pattern, and the shared cutting lines mean that if you change one piece, the pieces around it will be affected. There can be a hesitancy to make alterations because “it won’t be…

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The UFO Catalogue (complete and unabridged)

We’ve all got them, haven’t we? UFOs or UnFinished Objects. Projects lying around the house that just need a hem or buttonholes – maybe you lost interest, or lost weight….or it didn’t turn out how you expected and you screwed it up in a ball and threw it at the wall. I regret to admit…

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Finished! A Year of Zero Waste Sewing: November and December

Yesterday afternoon I finished the final instalment of what’s turned out to be a two-year project, A Year of Zero Waste Sewing. It’s a book I’m experimentally publishing in instalments as zines. Each zine comes as a file to print out at home (it prints out on 3 double-sided pieces of paper, which are folded…

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FREE sewing library bookplate

Do you have a library of sewing books at home? I’m guessing that you do. I sure do! Sewing books have been on my mind lately, as I’ve been considering the front and back sections of A Year of Zero Waste Sewing (at this stage I haven’t quite finished the November and December instalments, but…

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Getting closure on the denim jacket

This blog post has been two weeks in the making – I was thwarted by an electrical storm last week which took out our modem and phone line. But after services were restored and I was ready to hit publish, Mr H happened to see it and said he didn’t like what I’d done with…

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Absolutely riveting: re-using jeans pockets

The jacket I’m making from old jeans now has pockets unpicked off one of the original pairs. (Are you also making a jacket from jeans? The previous posts are here and then here.) I’ve had lots of useful advice for re-using the jeans pockets; thank you for all the ideas. The two big issues were…

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