Posts by lizhaywood
An Invitation to Making Zen 2026
Making Zen is a FREE five-day online event for hand stitchers and crafters. 30+ textile artists will guide you through workshops on a range of stitching techniques and creative processes. Read more and register here for FREE. It takes place on 4th-8th of May. Each day, 6-7 workshops will be available to watch for 24…
Read MoreA Tale of Two Oodies
The Backstory: My youngest teen was tidying her clothes and going through them. She owns two oodies – they’re square shaped oversized tops with long sleeves, hood and pockets. One wears them at home, sort of like a dressing gown. They’re both very soft polar fleece with a shaggy lining. She doesn’t really wear them…
Read MoreA Dose of Gingham Goodness
I’m making a nightie for my teen using a Jane Austen-era pattern for a shift, following on from last week’s post on using an historical sewing pattern. The pattern is in Costume Close-Up – a book of patterns from garments in the collection of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in the USA. Beyond the patterns, the…
Read MoreUsing an Historical Sewing Pattern
Following on from last week’s Marx-Etzel trousers, I thought it would be fun to discuss historical sewing patterns. These are patterns for clothes that are… These patterns are almost always zero waste, and a quick search on the Internet will bring up examples. They can also be found in books: However, if you’re used to…
Read MoreMy Modern Marx-Etzel Trousers
I’ve been making the trousers from the book Bog Fashion. Read about this interesting pattern in last week’s post. This is where we left off last week, a pinned-together pair of trousers with an enormous waist: I’ve spent the past week thinking about how to manage the wide waist and finish off the trousers. No-one…
Read MoreMaking the Marx-Etzel Trousers from Bog Fashion
For Christmas I received the book Bog Fashion – Re-creating Bronze and Iron Age Fashions by Nicole DeRushie, and it was such an interesting read I finished it in two sittings. The book describes textile finds from bogs and other sources in Northern and Western Europe, and then shows how they might be re-created. Patterns…
Read MoreCelebrating 10 Years of Blogging
Tomorrow The Craft of Clothes blog turns 10! This blog has notched up 462 posts including this one. I thank you all for reading, commenting, lurking, and contributing to this friendly part of the internet. You may be interested in how I came to start a blog. It was a year before The Dressmaker’s Companion…
Read More5 Ways to Wear a Beret
The Louvre Beret is a low or zero waste pattern, first published in TAUKO magazine last year. The copyright has now reverted to me, and the pattern is now in my shop. Please enjoy 25% off for the next month. Louvre has a YouTube sewalong – in the first few minutes I give a little…
Read MoreNew Pattern: Cotton Time Coatigan
Hello All, I have a new zero waste pattern, published in Japan’s Cotton Time magazine. It’s a coatigan – a kind of relaxed coat, combining the structure a coat with the softness of a cardigan. This opportunity arose via Mirai Pattern, who license and translate my zero waste patterns into Japanese. Cotton Time has featured…
Read MoreA Pocket Story
Since last week’s post about the ROO pocket in TAUKO magazine’s Pockets issue, some really fab examples have popped up on Instagram. As part of TAUKO magazine’s celebration of pockets, I thought it would be fun to share a pocket story. Here’s mine: When I was a child, my Dad who was a life-long pocket…
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