New-ish Pattern: Optimatium Dress

The zero waste Optimatium dress is a pattern which appeared in Tauko magazine #9 in October last year. The copyright has since reverted to me, and it’s been re-graded to a bigger size range and formatted as pdf pattern. It’s now in my shop – please enjoy 25% off for the next month. Optimatium means…

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On Designing a Zero Waste Hat

The Making Zen Online Retreat is coming up at the end of this month (it’s free – register here and read more). I’m presenting a sew-a-long for a low waste sunhat. The idea of a zero waste hat has been rolling around in my mind for the past year+, and I’d planned to talk about…

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Revisiting the Boho Dress

The boho dress is a pattern in the Zero Waste Sewing book. I made this pattern in 2018, only a couple of years into my zero waste adventures. The dress is a good example of using tessellations for zero waste, as the single pattern piece is top-and-tailed to nest perfectly together with itself. It has…

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6 Ways to wear a tunic dress

A Year of Zero Waste Sewing is now published, and I thought I’d show you some ways to wear one of the patterns in the book, the pleated top (which can also be made as a dress like I’ve done here). This pattern is still available on its own for the bargain price of $5AU…

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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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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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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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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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