The Fashionable Figure series continues in Maitland, Florida:  Build Your Regency Wardrobe!  Regency instructors Jennie Chancey and Audrey Russell return with three more workshops to help you build your Bridgerton or Jane Austen inspired wardrobe! 

Getting together with enthusiastic women who love the Regency era and excellent sewing was such a treat. In late July, my friend Audrey Russell and I put on a two-day sewing workshop to walk participants through my Regency Short Stays pattern from start to finish.

Audrey Russell and I have been hard at work and are happy to announce that we will be giving not one, but THREE presentations in July! The main event will be a two-day, hands-on workshop to fit and sew your own Regency stays. We will also be reprising our presentation, "The Fashionable Figure: Secrets of the Regency Modiste" (with more models and garments!), on the evening before the workshop. Finally, there will be a half-day "pre-workshop" on sewing your own Regency chemise, one week prior to the main event, conducted by Audrey.

I’ve known Jennifer from Historical Sewing for over 20 years, and I was delighted when she asked me to be a guest on her wonderful sewing podcast this month.

WWD contacted me a few weeks ago to talk about a new trend their editors had spotted due to the massive uptick in viewers of Regency film and television adaptations over the last year. They’d christened it “Regencycore”….

Do you love those classic styles of the 1930s and 40s? Perhaps you have an affinity for Peggy Carter? Well, this the sew-along for you!

Ready for the next step for my 1957 Dior remake? I've put together a video that shows how I "married" the fitted 3/4-length sleeve of my Ladies' Classic 1950s Wardrobe pattern to the bodice from the Girls' Classic Shirt Dress pattern. It is a very simple, easy modification to make, so don't be nervous if you are keen to try it!

I just wanted to ask your opinion about the Elegant Lady’s Closet pattern drawstring dress. I’ve made your dress several times, and I’ve enjoyed doing so. I’d like to create a gown out of cotton lawn, which is quite see through. I was thinking of adding a full lining to the inside of the gown bodice and omitting the stays lining. Do you think this would work?

So many of the books my mother read to us as children celebrated creativity--from gardening to sewing to knitting. It's no wonder I grew up itching to make lovely things! I now read many of the same books to my own children, and I thought it would be fun to put together a post featuring the favorites that have stood the test of time and continue to inspire and delight.

21 years ago, two customers, harp-playing sisters who loved to wear beautiful gowns while they performed, dropped me a line to ask if I'd consider bringing out patterns for some of my designs. At that point, I'd been filling custom sewing orders for about 18 months, mainly catering to the Regency/Napoleonic groups in the D.C. area by making day dresses and ball gowns. I'd also fallen in love with Regency fashions for everyday wear, finding them an excellent match for my expectant silhouette in 1997! But, while I designed patterns for my customers and myself, I hadn't considered publishing any of them. After all, that was what Big Companies did, and how could I possibly compete in a market that was positively flooded with patterns?

The Dress Like Your Grandma challenge is a highlight every year, especially as more and more sewists participate and dig into family trees and other historical archives for inspiration. Some of the entries this year just made me stop in my tracks and stare in amazement.

What fun to see all the entries in this delightful challenge last month! Check out the post of the winners for all the details, and thank you to everyone who participated.

For Designin' December, I thought I'd show the results of making my own dress from my new Ladies' Classic 1950s Wardrobe pattern, as I am super pleased with how it turned out. I opted for the pointed collar and closed the front with a lapped zipper (I'll be sharing that how-to on the blog in January). The fit is perfect and super easy for this nursing mama. I plan to make a bunch more to do some stash-busting and use up fabric that has been sitting much too long in my cupboards!

As a young teen obsessed with vintage clothing, I dearly wanted a circle skirt. I'd seen them in old magazines and thought the felt ones with appliques like poodles or the Eiffel Tower were just too cute for words. When my grandmother realized how much I loved vintage fashion, she gave me a beautiful ruffled petticoat she had made in the mid-1950s and two felted wool circle skirts she was still wearing as late as the 1970s (she kept her 23" waist until her death by doing nightly sit-ups on a slant board!). I was 14 at the time, and the clothes were a perfect fit. I was on cloud nine.

There are some days that opening my in-box leaves me with an especially huge smile on my face. I always love to hear from my customers, but I have a special place in my heart for the youngsters--the ones who discovered their love of sewing early on while using my patterns or while reading through helpful posts on the Message Forum, encouraged by fellow sewists all the way.

My friend Lorna McKenzie of The Tailor's Apprentice asked me in 2011 to review the Lilly Rose pattern she was developing from an original 1940s design. Unfortunately, I had just moved to Kenya and was expecting a new baby at the time, so I never did get around to sewing the dress. But I can't stand leaving a project undone, so five years later (!!!) I asked Lorna if I could still stitch up the pattern and provide feedback. She graciously sent me a review copy, and I got started!

Ladies, if you've ever struggled with what goes on before you put on your clothes, it's time to fix that. If you spend the day tugging up bra straps or end the day dying to be released from bra bondage, then, reader, this post is for you. We’re doing a first on my blog: going deep into the confusing world of bra-fitting (and, yes, this will have a historical connection and repercussions for at least one of my patterns!).

Even though I've made three versions of this dress previously, I am still not tired of it! I'm envisioning a springtime version in a pretty pastel with short sleeves for myself. This pattern is quite simple to sew up, offers a lot of options for deviating and making your own version. To top it off, Jennie Chancey based the pattern on a 40s design

Learn how to correctly set 18th-century sleeves with this video tutorial.

So, you've made your first outfit from one of my patterns. It went together without a hitch...until you put it on and stepped in front of a mirror. "Wait a minute!" you exclaimed. "This waistline is way too high! This sleeve just doesn't hit me where I thought it would! How am I supposed to be comfortable in this?" All of us are built differently. Even if we fit into a standard "size" on the pattern chart, we may find that the final results are less than flattering because we failed to take into account one or more unique features of our own body type. This page is here to help you identify those features and modify any pattern to better suit your figure type.