Prym 12 mm snap fasteners, pack of 6, central London: guess how much?

If you guessed a whopping £5.88, you’re right! That’s US$9.13, or more than triple the price.

Convert to your local currency and compare!

Looking back, I feel like I spent much of my childhood wrestling with shoddy tools. Probably the worst culprits were left-handed school scissors. Other southpaws may remember them: sticky-hinged, rusty, blunt-bladed and with handles that bit into your knuckles. They were so abysmal I eventually gave up and learned to cut right-handed. They also taught me the absolute futility of common ownership of tools. To this day, hands off my Ginghers if you know what’s good for you.

I fell in love with good tools the first time I ever used a properly sharpened chef’s knife, the kind you only have to stroke over the skin of a tomato for it to part like tearing silk. Using it instantly transformed meal preparation from drudgery into flow — a state of pleasurable absorption in which time no longer mattered. I wonder how many people think they don’t like cooking merely because most of their time in the kitchen is spent fighting against blunt knives, flimsy pans and dead stove sparkers.

Similarly, I spent my first couple of years as a home seamstress thinking I had no natural ability because I found it fiendishly difficult to achieve passable results even on seemingly simple projects. It was only later that I discovered many of my difficulties were due in large part to substandard tools — cheap plastic sewing machines, blunt shears, the wrong size needles, flimsy thread. Once I upgraded to good-quality tools, these difficulties vanished. (Which was a relief, but also meant I now had only my own ineptitude to blame when things went wrong.)

The Frister and Rossman Destiny, tool of the devil.

Sewing has a lot in common with cooking in that it requires specialized tools which might only get used a few times a year but for which there are no effective substitutes. A meal in the making can grind to a halt for lack of a grater or roasting pan; a beautiful dress can wind up in the Pile of Shame for lack of silk pins or a bias tape maker. I think this puts a lot of would-be sewers off, and I must admit that equipping a sewing room can hoover up a lot of money and time. But those of us who are even semi-serious about making our own food don’t scruple to equip our kitchens with electric mixers and turkey basters and citrus zesters, so why should we bridle at the idea of tailor’s hams, loop turners or pinking shears?

On the bright side, the tool-intensive nature of sewing gives it an element of magpie glee. You can always make an excuse to stop into a craft shop because there is always going to be something useful in there, usually at the pleasantly justifiable cost of £10 or less. Utilitarian shinies: the best of both worlds.

There are as many sewing setups as there are people who sew. I thought I’d give you a peek into mine. Here’s my sewing room, aka Atelier Catbox. Theoretically, this was meant to be a joint project room, but my sewing and I have almost completely annexed it. (Sorry, James! You snooze, you lose!) I probably should have prettied it up before taking the photo, but this at least gives you an accurate idea of what it looks like after I’ve finished a project: yes, like a cyclone hit it. Craft Rooms it’s not, but it is a happy mess.

Click through for the annoted image.

And here are some of the tools I use.

Measuring and cutting

Top to bottom: PatternMaster, Sew Easy French curve and quilter's ruler; rotary cutter, pinking shears, Gingher dressmaking shears, thread clipper, snips; sewing gauges. And measuring tape, obviously.

I mostly cut out garment pieces with shears on my living room floor, saving the rotary cutter for straight edges or small pieces, because it’s tedious trying to cut out anything larger than the cutting mat with a rotary cutter — you have to shift the mat underneath fabric and pattern, which invariably rucks everything up. The 24-inch quilters’ ruler is very useful, as it’s gridded and includes angle guides for cutting on the true bias, but I suspect it’s not 100% accurate. The Sew-Easy French curve I can’t honestly recommend for drafting — the edges feel like they’ve been hacked out with a handsaw. The PatternMaster is more useful and accurate, and comes in metric and imperial. The Fiskars snips (with gray and black handle) are excellent for clipping curves and snipping notches into seam allowances.

Pressing

Foreground to background: Sleeve board with cotton lawn and silk organza press cloths; tailor's ham; point presser/clapper; travel iron for small surfaces; spray bottle; iron with Teflon plate; feline assistant.

Pressing is a huge part of sewing, which is ironic (see what I did there?) because I have always avoided it whenever possible. I have a lot of pressing equipment, and I have to admit, grudgingly, that it makes all the difference. Sleeve boards and tailor’s hams are the kind of thing many sewers put off buying, but they are extremely useful for achieving better finish on garments. A tailor’s ham, for instance, can cure the Pointy Nipple Syndrome caused by bust darts. The spray bottle is for pressing linen or wetting press cloths; I don’t use steam from the iron very often as it’s hard to control. When I do, I fill my iron with bottled water because London tap water is so hard it can bork an iron completely within 6 months, turning it into a spluttering, limescale-spitting demon.

Marking

At left: Clover tracing wheel for use with carbon paper. Top to bottom: Hera, fine-point water-soluble marker, Chakoner chalk wheel, Sewline erasable marking pencil.

Different projects require different marking tools. The Chakoner chalk marker is probably one of the most useful sewing gadgets I own. About the same size as tailor’s chalk but much more accurate, it’s heart-shaped, refillable and fits easily in the hand, drawing a very fine line of powdered chalk using a rotating wheel. The chalk brushes off (usually). The Sewline pencil is a close second to the Chakoner; it handles like a mechanical pencil and the marks can be erased either with the eraser or with plain water.

Sewing

Bernina 830 in Horn cabinet, found on eBay. Cabinet open, sewing machine in operating position.

Cabinet closed, sewing machine lowered and stowed.

My knees literally went weak when I found this on eBay after eight months of waiting. The machine was a classic model I knew and loved, refurbished to near-mint condition. The cabinet had an airlift to raise and lower the machine, a custom insert for flatbed sewing and innumerable trays and drawers for notions. When I won the auction for just over half my maximum bid, I ran up and down the flat squealing. When the buildings across the road caught fire and we had to evacuate the house, it was harder to leave the Bernina than to leave the cat. It is my baby. (Sorry, Audrey.)

Some favorite gadgets:

Wrist pincushion

Why do I feel instantly more competent when I put this on? Who cares. No more groping for pins at a crucial moment. Constantly useful.

Scissors onna chain

Where are my scissors? James, did you take my scissors? I just had them. Goddammit, you put something down for one second in this house and… I already looked there. Are you sitting on them? Where the hell are they? Now I’m going to have to get off the couch and — oh, here they are. On this chain around my neck.

Fine point tweezers and seam ripper

Needle-nose tweezers. Good for pulling every last stray thread out of that seam you screwed up and had to unpick.

Vintage Singer hem marker

Menfolk like to pretend they don’t know how to use pins. If you haven’t got a reliable sewing buddy, here’s a good way to mark your hems accurately yourself. Adjust the red thingy to desired hem height on ruler, hold rubber bulb in hand, stand in front of marker and turn slowly in a complete circle, squeezing at intervals. The red thingy will puff a line of powdered chalk all the way around your skirt to mark your hemline. Sorted. (Avoid the Dritz/Prym hem marker as it is worse than useless.)

Simflex expandable gauge

If, like me, you are crap at getting buttonholes, tucks and pleats evenly spaced, you need one of these. It expands like an accordion to allow perfectly even marking. Watch out for pinched fingers.

The humble thimble

When I slip this on and pick up my needle, I feel like I’m taking my place among the billions of women, most of them nameless, who have stitched their way through the course of human history. Thimbles are sturdy, practical and utterly feminine. There are worse things to be.

Tell me about your tools!

(CCC does not recommend roasting anything at 30°C. Unless you like listeria.)

You never know how long nice weather will last on this island, so when the clouds retreat and the temperature rises, it’s time to get out of the sewing room and carp the diem. Just don’t try to go to the beach.

Sea, sand, sun AND LOTS AND LOTS OF XANAX.

During this spell of nice weather, I have moved away from the medium of fabric temporarily and am now working chiefly in lime, chilis, booze and ice. Here, try this:

Micheladas

• cheap lager, chilled (I like Red Stripe)
• small shot of freshly squeezed lime juice
• 2 dashes Tabasco
• 2 dashes soy sauce
• coarsely ground sea salt or Maldon salt
• big, robust, American-size ice cubes and plenty of ‘em
• a pint glass

Run a lime wedge around the rim of the pint glass and dip lightly in a saucer of salt, margarita-style. Add lime juice, soy sauce and Tabasco to glass. Fill three-quarters of the way up with lager. Add lots of ice. Quaff. Repeat. Wrong in so many ways, but it feels so right.

I’ll be back when the weather turns crap again!

The wardrobe, reimagined asks how women in fashion eras that offered fewer wardrobe options got around the problem of style line/body shape mismatch (corsetry?), and hammers home my dilemma with this simple infographic for dummies on What the Short-Waisted Woman Should Not Wear:

I don’t know about you, but my eyes instantly gravitate to the outfit on the left. Completely scrummy, right? Only it’s completely WRONG. We short-waisted types are supposed to line up to the right, behind Bella Swan there. I have been coveting the high-waisted, figure-hugging, demurely slutty pencil-skirted secretary look for years, but apparently it and I were never meant to be. I blame you for this futile passion, Joan Holloway.

Click the image and prepare to lose hours of your life. Many, oh so many, Mad Men fashion postmortems await.

We are very lucky to be living and sewing at a time when we have a proliferation of styles to choose from, so even though it might be difficult renouncing my Mad Men dreams, I’m not condemned to wearing silhouettes that don’t suit me. Right now I’m shifting focus away from waist/hip-conscious eras (40s, 50s) and experimenting with leg-conscious ones (60s, 70s). Bonus: the UK is still somewhat stuck in the Benny Hill era sexually, so its collective leg fixation is alive and well.

I’m finding this vintage Playboy photo immensely inspiring. Talk about playing up your assets. She could have Starbucks-sized muffin top tucked inside that dress and no one would notice.

Via The Selvedge Yard.

Here’s one vintage pattern I have plans for:

Here’s another:

Still a bit of Betty Draper going on in View C's hat, and isn't that a teenage Joan in the back?

Right! I’d better get cracking before the British summer ends!

What are your thoughts on picking vintage looks or projects to suit your body type? What do you do when your taste doesn’t suit your own shape?

Strasbourg was brilliant. It’s the mittel-European analogue of my American hometown: part well-heeled university town, part hicksville. (Up to and including dodgy mustaches, pickup trucks and local talent roaming the streets on tractors.) But because this is France, it’s also full of beautiful and lively public spaces, civilized bars and good restaurants. I got to eat one of these!

Strasbourg is also a cyclist’s paradise — honeycombed with safe, well-maintained cycle paths, endowed with a subsidized bike-hire scheme and consequently teeming with girls in fluttery dresses riding city cruisers and gentlemen in suits on sit-up-and-begs.

Save us from this socialist nightmare!

This made a nice change from London, where people make awfully heavy weather out of cycling, kitting up in hi-vis and lycra, going gung-ho with the toe clips and pounding the pedals with red-faced, joyless intensity.

Because I refuse to treat getting to work as an Exxxtreme Sport, I’m happy riding the defiantly unsporty contraption I call the ladybike — a hand-me-down Dawes pimped out by a former tank mechanic named Thor. It has upright handlebars, a basket homemade from a paint scuttle and, best of all, an onboard stereo for sexy tunes. (Kids! Riding in headphones is not recommended!) I try to make it clear to other road users that speed is not to be expected. And what better way to do this than by cycling in a skirt?

This skirt… wow. Therein lies a tale. This skirt just did not want to be made.

I bought the fabric — a to-die-for Kokka double gauze called Girly & Bitter — a year ago. I got serious, sweaty-palmed lust the instant I saw this fabric. How can you not love it? It’s got everything. A waist-to-hem border print… little birds… hand-drawn swags recalling the princess dresses I drew as a girl…

Candlesticks… scissors… parrots in top hats… milk jugs… bunnies…

Choosing a pattern appropriate to your fabric and vice versa is one of those many little sewing finesses you can only learn, it seems, through trial and error. Instead of being smart like this person and this person and using a really simple pattern to showcase the fabric, I decided, unwisely, to use Butterick 5029. The project tanked — it was a mediocre pattern, the style was unflattering and the design didn’t suit my fabric — so on to the Pile of Shame it went. Then, a month later, I took it out again and cut the dress down into a gathered skirt. For a bunch of reasons, mostly involving my inexplicable love of freestyling instead of actually thinking when confronted with sewing challenges, that didn’t work either. Back it went on the Pile of Shame. Then I tried a contour waistband. Back on the Pile. Then back out again. Etc. All the time the skirt getting smaller and smaller. I ought to have called it a day after Fail #4 … but I couldn’t.

Finally, one year later, I returned to Girly and Bitter for the last time. I decided to use what fabric remained to make the absolute simplest gathered skirt I could think of, with contour waistband. Even then it was like armwrestling with Beelzebub. Apart from the hand-rolled hem, every seam in this skirt has been sewn and ripped at least five times. It isn’t that the fabric was difficult to work with; on the contrary, that was what made my difficulties so infuriating. I kid you not: at some point during the many, many hours I spent wrestling with this fabric, I honestly Googled “girly and bitter curse”. Nothing came up. Unsurprisingly, the problem was me: my inability to pick a plan and stick to it, my passion for impulsive shortcuts and my total lack of design forethought. I cannot picture how something will look ahead of time — I have to try it, hack it up, restitch, try again, etc… which is why my projects get so many iterations that by the time I’m finished they tend to feel grubby and overworked.

I wonder a lot why I keep sewing when I’m obviously not particularly good at it. Part of the reason has to be that it is strangely, deeply satisfying for me to do something I’m not very good at, and nearly miraculous to feel myself getting slowly and painfully better. This is what I call “the joy of suck”. It’s a kind of torment, but it means I’m learning — not just acquiring new knowledge, but developing a completely different set of skills and abilities. Staying human.

This is a necessary battle to fight. If the angsty perfectionist in me had her way, my life would be a perfectly clean white room with nothing in it, except perhaps one perfect bowl of flowers. And like one of my favorite poets pointed out, this would not be enough.

Clear water in a brilliant bowl,
Pink and white carnations. The light
In the room more like a snowy air,
Reflecting snow. A newly-fallen snow
At the end of winter when afternoons return.
Pink and white carnations—one desires
So much more than that. The day itself
Is simplified: a bowl of white,
Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round,
With nothing more than the carnations there.

Say even that this complete simplicity
Stripped one of all one’s torments, concealed
The evilly compounded, vital I
And made it fresh in a world of white,
A world of clear water, brilliant-edged,
Still one would want more, one would need more,
More than a world of white and snowy scents.

There would still remain the never-resting mind,
So that one would want to escape, come back
To what had been so long composed.
The imperfect is our paradise.
Note that, in this bitterness, delight,
Since the imperfect is so hot in us,
Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.

Lessons learned:

• Matching pattern and fabric is half the battle.
• Make any design changes before cutting if possible.
• Pick a plan of action and stick to it.
  
• The imperfect is our paradise.
  

French high-speed trains are my happy place on rails. Safe from the brawling world, gently rocked by efficient engineering, I can read, stitch, sip champagne, listen to albums from beginning to end, look out the window on wind turbines rising from poppy-sprinkled fields and actually feel like I’m living in a bearable present rather than some dystopian fantasy of the mid-1990s.

Cardiganizing of sweater in progress.

I will be investigating the city’s crafty possibilities once the week’s work is over, but updates may be scarce until then.

The Project: Converting thrifted cashmere sweater into cardigan.

The Mission: A trip to the nearest haberdashery supplier reasonably likely to stock everything I need.

Supplies purchased:

• 2 m poly satin ribbon in color sort of vaguely approximating cardigan (they didn’t have any green grosgrain)
• 1 spool thread in color a bit closer to my cardigan
• 12 shell buttons
• 2 seam rippers

Total cost: £15.28 [convert this to your local currency]

• Seam rippers: £2 each
• Shell buttons: 60p each
• Ribbon: 40p/metre
• Thread: £1
• Tax (17.5%): £2.28

Total time spent: 2 hours

• 45 minutes’ cycle ride to shop
• 10 minutes in shop
• 1 hour 5 minutes’ cycle ride home (rush hour, multiple detours, coat fell out of basket at one point and had to be retrieved)

Reasons why I am sewing a cardigan in June:

• Current temperature: 55°F
• Average temperature drop after sunset: approximately 20°F
• Brora’s certainty that you will need a cashmere sweater even in summer: 100%