Meet three home sewists whose love of their craft led them to embark on a new career designing patterns...
Written by Rachel Bearn
Many of us have enjoyed being part of the sewing community online. Social media has connected like-minded crafters across the globe and allowed us to both be inspired and learn from people we might never have come across without it. Recently, one skill seems to be growing in popularity with home sewers – designing your own sewing patterns.
Holly Dennett (@holly_dennett) was one such sewer. Having studied a fashion degree, including learning all about pattern cutting and designing, she began sharing her makes on her social media. “I graduated from my fashion degree in spring 2020. Due to lockdowns, there weren’t many jobs within the fashion industry, and I had to shield from Covid which made it even harder to find a job, so I turned to social media,” she says. “To maintain and develop my skills I decided to continue to design, pattern draft, and sew my own garments and share them on Instagram similarly to how I had been doing while studying. The account followers grew rapidly, and I had soon built a community of home sewists and fashion students who wanted to learn and be inspired to sew.”
A BUSINESS IS BORN
Holly soon found that her followers on Instagram wanted to sew the patterns she was sharing. “As the garments I was posting had been designed and self-drafted by me, my new sewing community couldn’t recreate my makes and they would often ask me about sewing patterns they could use,” she says. “This is when I decided to create and release my own sewing patterns for my home sewing community who follow me and enjoy my designs and makes.”
But creating sewing patterns from scratch can be incredibly challenging as Holly found out. “The main challenge I feel, is learning all the details and techniques around fitting a garment perfectly to the body and how very small adjustments to the sewing pattern can really change a fit of a garment,” she says. “This a huge skill to learn that takes a lot of practice and experience – I am definitely still learning and think I always will be.” Attending The University for the Creative Arts in London to study fashion, however, gave Holly a big advantage when learning to draft her own patterns. “I was taught the technical knowledge of dart manipulation, working with blocks and patte
