Welcome March and Zoom with Claire - Your Weekly Guide from Sewing Artistry

Published: Fri, 03/05/21

Basic

March 5, 2021

OMG - I think I can possibly think about spring - maybe - sometime in the future. This part of the country always has a "late snowfall" but I'm hoping this month we can skip that - thankyouverymuch!!!

So lots of people are looking toward the new season with lots of questions:
- How am I going to make the post-pandemic body look good?
- How can I make this figure have a waist or something close?
- My life style has changed how can I reflect that in my garments?
- What in the world can I make that will be useful and flattering?
- And I want something comfortable....puhlease!!!!

One of the great things (yes, there is a great thing) that has happened during this pandemic, is that I've been Zooming (is that a verb?...I see it being in the new vernacular of modern language!!!), with students. I absolute love this, because I knew if I could simply see students and what they are doing, where they had problems, what were their questions and most of all working through inspirations and other ideas, that it would be the huge fulfillment of a goal.

What I learned when I started teaching was when a student would stand in front of me with a frown and say, "Nothing is right," I could easily stand there and talk about what all was right and how we could fix the little that was wrong. And I can't tell you how much fun this was for me.

Your Local (Regional or maybe even Worldly) Sewing PIMP at Work.
More than anything else, working with students and helping them work through their fitting problems, but going further into being fashionable and further yet with being flattering then to top it all off with being comfortable was like the most fun and biggest high for me. It still is.

Sewing is like math to me. Every math problem has a solution. Every figure has a solution. Granted with both math and figure-fitting/styling/flattery there are parameters within which I must work. That means that if you have a shape like a beach ball, you can still look good and flattering - it will not be the same look as your neighbor who can eat anything and not gain weight. The goal is to show off our best asset and hide our not-so-good parts!

The bottom line is that there is a solution to every fitting problem. And sometimes that solution is finding out things about your likes and dislikes that you may not have know even existed, much less that you could have these kind of choices. I had a student who was having so much problem with her pants waistband, and finally I asked her if she liked waistbands on her pants and we finally discovered that she didn't and guess what? Because she sews, she doesn't ever have to have another waistband on her pants ever again!!!

Here's a short video to show what you get on these lively conversations:

Not only discovering the solutions to fitting problems, but also discovering the solutions to our own style likes and dislikes. Making our own rules as we go along is something that often doesn't occur to sewists, simply because we haven't had too much to draw from for guidance or inspiration out there in the fashion world. But that's OK, cause we can do this on our own. We absolutely aren't dependent upon them.

These are the kinds of things I love to work with my students, and I knew that if there was a way I could transmit myself from being in my little studio to around the globe in students' sewing places, that I could help them work though solvable problems.

Enter Zoom (I Zoom, you zoom, he zooms, we zoom, they have been zooming, we will have been zooming...yeah, I think it's a verb!!!) It is so much fun for me to see my students working with their inspiration and creativity with Zoom. We can share real time with video on how to make a better look, talk about what we want, discover your goals and open up to new inspirational ideas and more than anything have fun creating great looking clothes.

So toward that end, I've put up a link in the Resource Library for scheduling Zoom appointments. Some are free and some are not. To help you through all this, I've done a little video. I'm using a scheduling software because my feeble little brain can't keep track of everything and this software makes it so much easier for me and you.

Here's that video. It's hard to discount free, which I imagine will fill up pretty quickly - so if you need something on a schedule, that's what the paid slots are for. Every week there will be new slots added

Click here to schedule a free appointment for a Zoom with Claire. And click here for a short video on how to do the scheduling.

The best way to do this is get your ideas all organized and then ready for the live video. A laptop is best because it has the camera and the speaker/microphone all included in the computer. If you use a desktop then you will have get a microphone and camera, which are easily found on the internet and are not that expensive.

Lastly you can also do this with your smartphone. Get the app and install and then you have the camera, microphone and speaker all on the phone.

This is a new system so if you have any problems at all, simply respond to this email and we can work them out. And yes the email is up and working again!

Looking forward to seeing you all on Zoom with Claire!