Sewing Series: Teach Yourself to Sew - season 1-3

Today I ordered a Threads magazine subscription after running across their website looking for a good pattern making software (I'll talk about that later) and saw this great sewing series for beginners and people who want to brush up on their sewing skills. Since I fit into both categories I figured it'd be a good match. Here's a vid where they talk about what's in the series. Season 1 is very basic projects, but the info is great foundation stuff like seams, zippers, buttons, understanding patterns etc... Season 2 is more advanced techniques like elastic, gathering, invis. zippers, and even making your own dress form... and Season 3 talks about things like pattern manipulation and fitting techniques. I can't wait for the videos to come in the mail, and will be sure to share my thoughts on them as I watch and hopefully learn. If you're more curious you can find some series info here.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson - Cosmic Sermon

Where was this guy when I was struggling with science in high school? Just this first video is not only amazing in his passion for his flavor of science, but he speaks about astrophysics in a very accessible
way.


 

Making Millinery Blocks

After the millinery class I took a couple semesters ago I've been thinking about hat blocking, namely for use stretching wool felt and fosshape. I have priced a few, most of the good quality wood hat blocks are prices in the low hundreds. So, DIY lass that I am, I looked around on how to make my own. Here's some useful stuff I found.

 The first gem is a video from the show Threadbangers in with milliner Victor Osborne talks about making a hot block using some inexpensive and easy methods.

 

Here's a tutorial on how to carve and prepare styrofoam for use as a hat block (as well as some other ideas I'd like to give a go. Carve Your Own Utility Hat Block