Complete Photo Guide to Clothing Construction
A technique-focused, how-to book that will guide any sewer, novice or experienced, in completing a professional-looking garment. Seamster Haynes has developed a new style of teaching clothing construction, one that’s not dependent on a specific pattern or style. Instead, she concentrates, first, on the basics, coding each photograph or illustration for easy reference—although, unfortunately, not all visuals are magnified well (such as fabric swatches, pattern booklets, and directions). After tools and patterns are addressed, from sewing machines to buttons and threads, the detailed step-by-step color photographs and captions arrive for almost every part of the process. Pinning and cutting fabric, always a critical first, are here pictured in ways and with methods that won’t allow scissors to slip. The next three elements don’t vary from that formula, providing crafters almost foolproof instructions for sewing zippers, making contour darts, and fashioning an elegantly scalloped hem, among other exercises. At the end of each chapter is a two-page color fold called “Anatomy of a Garment,” pointing via numbers to the clothing basics just discussed. --Barbara Jacobs