Becoming an at-home tailoring whiz

April 23, 2012 4:49 PM

Hi Sewers! I'm just learning how to sew thanks to a new sewing machine and a community college class this summer, but I'd like to develop a specific expertise in alterations and tailoring due to my love of thrifting. There are lots of sewing books out there- is there one that has an especially good chapter on tailoring and altering?

The recommended text for my class is The New Complete Guide to Sewing: Step-by-Step Techniques for Making Clothes and Home Accessories but there's no way to look inside it on Amazon.

I appreciate your recommendations!

posted by foxy_hedgehog to Clothing, Beauty, & Fashion (4 answers total)

Response by poster: Oops! Here's the link for the book I mentioned.
posted by foxy_hedgehog at 4:50 PM on April 23, 2012

When I took fashion design classes (pattern making, design & construction specifically) we used "Patternmaking for Fashion Design." This book is more about making clothes from scratch but I think it gave me a great background in how garments are constructed. Hopefully someone will have a better tailoring/alteration book recommendation.

The few specifically "alteration" articles I've saved have been from Threads magazine. My library carried it and I would photocopy any articles I found useful.
posted by Bunglegirl at 6:25 PM on April 23, 2012

I don't do anything more than the most basic sewing so I can't recommend but it occurred to me that this topic is a good one to search for public domain books at Google Books and the Internet Archive. (Those searches were for "sewing", here are ones for "tailoring".)
posted by XMLicious at 6:26 PM on April 23, 2012

I was actually going to recommend The New Complete Guide to Sewing- mine is a bit older though and looks like this.

Also I have found some pretty good internet tutorials on taking things in and messing with hemlines here (scroll down to the upcycles/refashions/alterations and they are separated by tops, pants, and skirts/dresses, which is nice). From one beginner to another, good luck!
posted by shes_ajar at 6:34 PM on April 23, 2012 [2 favorites]