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I love this photo. It is pure happiness. It is everything that a wedding photo should be. Liz and Nick got married on New Year's Eve. It seems incredibly romantic to start your married life on the very first day of the new year. I had the absolute pleasure of working with Liz to create her wedding skirt. She came to me with some ideas and some photographic inspiration. Her ideal dress was made with an Orenburg lace overlay. Orenburg lace is a traditional form of Russian lacework. The dress was stunningly simple, elegant and perfect for the occasion. Liz...

The pattern envelope is the gateway to a successful sewing project. Pattern designers include all the information you need to know to get started which is why it can be a little confusing or overwhelming at first. In this post we're going to break down the anatomy of pattern envelopes and give a little insight on how to interpret them. After reading this you should have complete confidence to head to the fabric store and get all of the supplies you need to get your project off on the right foot. This is an information-heavy post but it will always...

We, at the Makery, love a good pun. It only seems fitting (See what I did there?) that our new blog series should be called Sewing Notions. It's a series that will cover a lot of basic information about sewing as well as some tips, some tricks and, yes, even some actual sewing notions. When we teach classes on sewing it can be hard to cover all of the basics and still get down to the business of sewing. We wanted to put all of this information down in one place where you could access it easily before coming to a class. That's...

I tackled knits and came out on top.  I'm super happy with this dress. Before the holidays I bought the Makery's last Colette Moneta pattern with grand plans.  I hustled my way down to Patch in Halifax for a couple of yards of Chris' beautiful bamboo jersey.  I've not had much experience with knits so I set myself up with both the pattern and the Colette sew along as a guide.  More advice is better, right?Cutting out + pattern matchingAs I haven't really used knits much before I was nervous about cutting it out.  Add on top of that the stripe...

  With the arrival of Cotton + Steel fabrics to the Makery, I quickly jumped in whipping up not one, but two Wiksten tank dresses in a week.  This continues to be a favourite pattern of mine as it is a quick, easy and satisfying sew I can complete in an afternoon.   I used a contrasting solid cotton for the bias facing which allowed me to cut down on the required main fabric to 1.5 metres for the dress as opposed to the 2.75 metres the pattern called for.  Even though these dresses are both navy, the xo and arrow patterns give them...