humbly submitted.

earnest follow-up advice for making clothes, or trying to.

Later this week, Rose and I are headed up to Maine, families in tow, for the High Season Market. We’ll be teaching workshops and selling copies of Making Things and somewhere between unpacking from my family’s last Maine adventure and prepping crates of craft kits and books for this one, I developed a hankering for a new summer dress. There’s something about shifting gears, venturing out of my day-to-day comfort zone, and scrutinizing my clothing options as I shove them into a canvas duffle bag, that can really bring out a bit of sartorial lust in me. My vacation self—that more relaxed, more carefree, more ready to wear yellow gingham while standing on the rocky Maine coast version of me—wanted something new and I decided to indulge her.

Instead of packing, I made a dress.

I didn’t become an expert seamster overnight, but it turns out that making a few small tweaks to my typical style of utterly winging it, set me up for a measure of clothes-sewing success I hadn’t totally believed was possible. In case it can offer some encouragement to anyone else, here’s what I did differently this time: