I love the Seattle Public Library. They buy books for me and keep them until I need them.
I have been meaning to read this book, as it sounds like my sort of book: take stuff apart and make new stuff out of it.
Beth Huntington blogs at https://chicenvelopements.wordpress.com/tutorials/. She was not the first Renegade Seamstress (love the stuff here). It's hard to give yourself a nickname and make it stick in the blogoverse.
She is very successful at it, and her book has a lot going for it. She's like a cheerleader who wants you to see the good in the cast offs. Unlike a lot of refashioners, she's a thrift shopper first, looking for good material and potential.
She is the first to admit that her methods are probably not seamstress level. She doesn't finish many interior seams except with Fray Check, there's no concerns about mixing your DCO and your machine wash items in one outfit, and she plays fast and loose with marking and measuring. Her knits frighten me (the Wild Life Skirt elastic waistline measurements confused me; did she just cut this too narrow to go over your hips? Maybe she has skinny hips. Ah, shaddup picky brain!).
The inside back cover of the book has a list of other publications, and one should be the companion volume:
Do not be fooled by the adorable children. There are some amazing projects in this one for dealing with knits, and some great finishing techniques.
I can't believe I haven't written about this book; I stumbled on it this summer. I would like to pretend I invented a lot of tech for t's, but I'm just doing what any good mom would do: saving stuff. And Little Fixes is just a really good compendium of how-to's and why not's. If you're going to start cutting up tshirts, this is the how to book to end up with something that looks good and will stand up to some washings.
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| I made this big so you could kinda read it. "Be sure the design is facing outward". |
I do have to give Ms Huntington some major props for finding the good in the less than interesting. Her taste isn't mine, but she is brave and did some righteous saves. And her suggestion to put a padlock on the good scissors is going into action tomorrow morning.
More book reviews in following weeks! If you've read a good one lately (sewing that is), pile on here.
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