By hand london

Briefly interrupting the Elisalex Dress Sewalong to bring you a quick and easy tutorial on how to add side seam pockets - not only to the Elisalex Dress, but also to just about anything with a side seam! I think we can all agree that the addition of pockets significantly ups the convenience of almost any garment - and

One of the things I get asked the most when I'm teaching dressmaking and fitting classes is, "can I just add a sleeve to a sleeveless bodice?". The quick answer is no - a sleeveless bodice has been designed to be sleeveless, and the armhole is very different to one which is designed to hold a sleeve, so by sewing a sle

Full skirts and their infinite variations can be the quickest and most satisfying sewing project, whip-uppable in under an hour. That is, once you've mastered the basics that make up a skirt's skeleton, namely inserting an invisible zipper which we've already covered here, and attaching a waistband. The following tutor

Aloha Sewists, and welcome to the Alterations section of the Kim Dress Sewalong! Throughout these posts we will be going through as many pattern alteration tutorials as we can physically crush in, relevant to the Kim Dress. But it doesn't end there - the extra great news is that a lot of these tutorials will be applica

Last week we launched our brand spanking new beauty of a pattern, the Hannah wrap dress, and we couldn't be more bowled over by your response! We knew this pattern had been long anticipated since Elisalex posted a picture of her first Hannah-in-the-works back in May, and despite not being able to get it released during

As I'm sure most of you know, it's the little extra details that transform your handmade garms and make them really stand out in a sea of generic High Street trends - things like thoughtful pattern placement, an exquisitely finished hem or the addition of those delicate vintage buttons you found in your Grandma's old s

Soooo, hopefully our last post on bust adjustments didn't send you running straight to the nearest Forever 21... No? Still with us? Excellent. But don't worry, we threw you in at the deep end and got the worst of it out of the way with all those FBA's & SBA's. Today's post on fixing gapey/tight backs is a whole lot

Since my last post on sewing with velvet, my interest in awkward fabrics is growing exponentially! I seem to have kicked off 2015 with an uncontrollable need to master the art of working with fabrics that I previously would have avoided like the plague. In the interest of documenting my findings and sharing some tips,

If you read this blog often, or follow us on Instagram, you'll probably already know of Elisalex's (that's me!) love of pompom trim. So whimsical, yet so versatile... Oh, how I love a good sprinkling of pompom trim! It was only a matter of time then, before I decided to make my own pompom trim with my trusty crochet ho

There's no denying it - the most luxurious and covetable fabrics in the world are often the hardest to work with. And maybe it's exactly that that added to their stature in the first place: not everyone could just pick up a few metres of silk chiffon and whip up a gown in a day. But luckily for us in this age of inform