Unfortunately I still have no pictures of my projects. Been too busy :) a good busy until today's crazy work busy kicked in.
I spent all day Thursday, Friday and half of Saturday at the Chicago Sewing and Quilt expo. This time I took a bunch of classes from 4 different sewing instructors/professionals. 2 of them I have used their patterns and have taken a couple classes in years past. Peggy Sagers from Silouhette Patterns and Cynthia Guffey. I really like both of these ladies and can identify strongly with their ideas and methods. Even though they can be very different in some ways.
I also took a class from Emma Seabrooke and Gail Yellen. I have not worked with them before and learned much from them.
Happily for me the Expo this year seems to have a larger selection of 3 hour hands on classes. I took four of these over the three days and found it very rewarding. I met new people, learned lots of new things, and got to try out new techniques.
The first class I took was given by Peggy Sagers and was an upper body fitting class. Where each f the 20 women tried on sample tops in variety of sizes, we stood up front and class did a fit critique and Peggy showed what she would do for a correct fit and then we translated that information into a flat pattern. Of the 20 or so women only 1 was an even size throughout her entire pattern. Most of us were a mix of sizes in different areas. It really helped hone in the eye to repeat the process across so many different body types.
The second class was a technique class on how to stabilize different types of knits with different types of stay tapes. We each had our own sewing machine and went through about a dozen samples of different knit types and hems and necklines and where you use a knit stay tape versus a woven and how to work with stretch lace versus jersey, etc... Excellent info! This class was by Emma Seabrooke.
The third was by Cynthia Guffey and it was a collection of different types of seam treatments. Again we each worked on our on sewing machine (by the way , the machines were supplied by the different vendors) these I will have to take a picture of when I get home because they were so beautiful and really not that hard to do. Things like butt seams, which makes like a giant standing pin tuck along the seam, bias inset seams, wrapped seams, and others.
The last hands on class I took was a cover stitch workshop given by Gail Yellen. I was particularly happy about this class because we were supplied with a room full of Evolution Sergers. Each of us got to work on our own machine, this is the machine I have at home. :) since I have not done anything nut some playing around with my cover lock feature this was an excellent class. We walked away with a bag full of samples and some nice jeans thread, I now feel much more comfortable with my cover lock and just exactly what I do with it and how.
And as you can imagine, spending three days at a sewing expo broke my budget, I left with patterns, fabric, notions, dvd's, new feet for my Symphony and Evolution and I splurged on a starter kit for using pain sticks on fabric. I have been wanting them for several years now.... More things for me to play with!! Now to win the giant lottery so I can stay home and just play in my sewing studio! One can wish!
Here is a parting shot of what I worked on while on my flight today. A little bit of English Paper Piecing, sewing that is all done by hand and very portable.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:Downtown Toronto,Canada
No comments:
Post a Comment
comments, thoughts, idea? Please share!