Renewal, Restoration, & Research!

Just a quick note to say HELLO to all the lovely Sewing Academy readers, and give you a peek at my project stack for the coming months!

Lilly Martin Spencer; The Little Navigator

I’ll be dressing my own daughters (and baby grandson, thanks to that old-married Eldest girl of mine!) for the upcoming season’s history tours at the small regional history park where we volunteer, so look for some sew-alongs and tutorials related to dressing infants, pre-teens, teens, and young adult women.

Sewing Academy member P. Thacker, of the Pacific Northwest Contingent, has sent in some great process photos for fitting and completing a lovely corset for a young lady, and that’ll be coming up soon, too.

I have permissions in hand for not one, not two, but THREE amazing and totally bog-common mid-century sunbonnets from private and site collections, to add as project sheets in the Compendium! These will all be for personal use only (courtesy to the owners who have been awfully gracious in allowing us to share them!), and are not to be used for items that will be sold. I’m excited to see what gorgeous sun protection you’ll all make with the project sheets–corded and slatted variations included. They each have features to delight the maker and the wearer.

We’re in the planning stages for workshop weekends in Minnesota and the Pacific Coast in the early fall of 2018, and talking about some fun options in Arkansas or Ohio for 2019.

Great Auntie Maude’s Favorite Cloth Doll will be coming out as a digital-download very soon! The fun everyone is having with instant gratification and the Cloth Girl pattern is encouraging, so we’ll be making more published items available that way.

I’m even working on a digital version of The Dressmaker’s Guide, so it’ll be easier than ever to get hold of your copy, whether you’re US or overseas.

Tiny, Tidy Things (a fun set of pointlessly decorative items from US publications in the early 1860s, including full-size templates, original text, and illustrated instructions for replication) will be available very soon as both a workshop option (we had so much fun with that in Gettysburg!) and as a stand-alone project book in print and digital download.

We’ll be doing a large-scale revamp of The Sewing Academy @ Home forum, with an eye toward making it far more mobile-device-friendly, and will be rolling out some fun group research “dogpiles” and other virtual activities you’ll want to read.

Basically: 2018 promises to be a busy year of renewal, restoration, and fresh research to enhance our appreciation of the mid-19th century! I’m glad you’re along for the ride, and can’t wait to see what we all do together!