 Hi you guys, Lindsay here. Welcome back to my channel, Inside to Him. So one of the most frequently asked questions I get from all of you is how in the world do I know how to pair fabrics with patterns? How do I know that this fabric is going to look good made up in this particular garment? And to be perfectly honest with you, learning that took years and a lot of trial and error with a majority of it being errors. I mean, I made some really cute dresses out of really terrible fabric for that pattern. Learning about drape and weight and just being able to envision a fabric in its 2D flat form in a 3D garment is one of those things that really elevates your sewing from beginner home sewist to someone who people are shocked to learn that you make your own clothes. And so whenever you guys ask me how I learned, I really can only tell you that I just went to as many fabric stores as I could possibly go to and I just touched a bunch of fabric. I read the end of the bolts. I just learned and memorized certain characteristics of all the fabrics that I learned to sew with. When I found a fabric that I loved and I knew how it behaved, I would sew lots of garments in that. I have, you know, four or five rayon shally maxi dresses because I found something that worked. Sounds like I'm gonna stick with this. But, you know, you kind of get tired of doing that. You want to branch out. You want to be able to mimic the kinds of clothes that you're seeing and ready to wear. How do you do that when you go to a fabric store and you're just looking at bolts and bolts and bolts of pretty stuff and you just have no idea if it's going to work. Well, today I'm going to tell you one of my best kept secrets and most loved tricks on how to learn about fabrics. And that is with a swatch subscription. So there are a few of them on the market. Today I'm going to talk to you about the one that Vogue fabrics offers. They come out with this seasonal like magazine basically. It's beautifully done on really thick card stock paper. And inside is an entire like magazine style magazine type quality layout of little croquis, little like drawings of people in actual patterns with real fabrics paired with those patterns. And because it's a swatch club, you actually get swatches of all the fabrics. These come in little two by four maybe swatches. And they are just enough for you to be able to tell stretch. You'll be able to feel it and feel the texture. You can see the colors in real life. You can hold it up to your skin and see, you know, how it looks. You can hold them up to each other and see if they pair well together. And in terms of using this as an educational tool, in addition to seeing, okay, they want, they think that this fabric would look really cute as a little A line skirt. Okay, yeah, yeah, I can see that as an A line skirt. You could in theory, buy this fabric, buy this pattern, make this skirt and someone would have basically held your hand in matching a pattern with fabric pretty much foolproof. Or you can also start to use this as like an encyclopedia or as like a resource guide because with each swatch paired with its, you know, illustrated counterpart is the complete like makeup of the fabric itself. This one is 98% polyester, 2% spandex. So you can kind of learn a little bit about polyspan and what that looks like, how it drapes, how it feels. It also gives you a care instructions for each one of them as well. So there is a lot to be learned in here. And there are a variety of fabrics, which is also great. We have everything from the polyspan, you've got knits, jerseys, you've got tons of linen. What else came in this one? There's like, you know, netting type fabrics. There's seersucker and cotton. There's quilted fabrics. I mean, there are in terms of variety, there are a ton of fabrics here. So if you are trying to learn more about fabrics, these swatch programs are going to be invaluable to you. Now, if you feel like me, like you already kind of know the properties of fabrics, and you're pretty good at pairing them with patterns already, is the swatch catalog still going to be valuable to me? And in my opinion, I think that it is. I love shopping online. I think that there is just so much more variety. There's so much more, so many more options. And it also can be quite affordable as well versus shopping in store. But you don't always know what you're getting when you shop online. I mean, a lot of times I'm like, I think that would work, but I'm not really sure. And when it comes to the swatches, you really know exactly what you are going to get. I also love to use the swatches to make outfits. So this particular catalog is really great because it's broken out into like collections. And all of the collections would work really well together as like a little capsule wardrobe like this first one. It's kind of a whole navy thing happening here, navies and blues. But as you get through the catalog a little bit, you'll go into like some pinks and magentas. So you could really use this as a way to build a summer wardrobe of five to eight pieces that you know you're going to be able to pick from picked one or two of them and pair them all together. And they're all going to match and they're all going to look really good. There's no worry about the colors on the computer screen not coming through the way they are in real life because you can actually see them. And there's also just so much more variety for you to build a wardrobe that you really love and you don't feel limited just by whatever they have at Joanne, which is also really great. So Vogue sent me their summer catalog and let me kind of pick something from the catalog that I loved and wanted to make something from. So I chose this adorable little rainbow seersucker right here. And they sent me some yardage which I have right here. So it's like the little mini version and then your your full yardage. So this is seersucker 100% cotton perfect perfect for summer for this hot humid weather that we have here in the southeast here in North Carolina even. And I talked about this a little bit in my sewing plans video what pattern I was going to use, what I wanted to make from it. So I am excited to sew this up this month and show you guys you know what it looks like in the end. But I also grabbed something that you know I might not normally have picked up if it weren't for the swatch catalog. I was thinking about you know how humid and hot it is outside and how when you go indoors like I like to work from the library or whenever you go in to get a meal. Normally those restaurants are those places are super cold there's cranking the ac and you know your skin is a little bit damp from the humidity you go inside and now you're freezing. So I thought it'd be nice to have kind of like a light layer to put over the dress that I make. And if I were just browsing their website or any website I might have reached for something like linen. But when I came across this double gauze I just got a vision of kind of like an over shirt type of thing where it almost feels like one of those scarf type things but would be made into more like a shirt. And I felt like the weight and the drape of this particular double gauze would be great for that. And this all this inspiration is coming to me as I'm like touching and feeling the swatch itself. And it might not have come to me. I might just have ended up with like a white linen jacket or just worn my white denim jacket that I already have. But this I think is going to be an interesting component to my wardrobe because it is so lightweight it will be perfect for the summer months not too hot when you're outside but would be enough to keep you a little bit cozy and warm whenever you go indoors. So that's kind of how my thought process worked when building this little outfit that I put together and kind of the reasons why I chose what I chose. And like I said I'll make these things up this month and you'll be able to see both of them in my makes video that'll go live at the beginning of August. But you know it's just really cool to be able to touch and feel all the fabrics just as if you were in their store but you're on your sofa which is great. So they send out six catalogs a year it's the four main seasons and then two kind of like transitional ones that'll take you like early spring and early fall. And those catalogs ship every other month. If you order fabric from one of the 2018 or 2019 what's shipped so far if you order fabric from any of those catalogs there is a coupon code for you to use to save 20% on those fabrics. It's ITH20VF and again that's going to save you 20% on the fabrics from any of the back catalogs. They will send you the summer back issue for free as well. But I say go ahead and get the subscription. Who else gives you over 50 swatches in a magazine style format with color coordinated and patterns to match every single fabric. And all of that for just $30 a year. This is the best value and the best service on the market. There are other swatch catalogs out there like I said but this one is truly an amazing value. If you've ever ever said to yourself I can buy fabrics online it's too hard to find good quality fabrics. I don't know how to compare colors when I'm shopping online. I don't know what fabrics go with what patterns. I don't know if I'm actually even going to like this fabric whenever it shows up. If you've ever said any of those things to yourself then you need to get this swatch catalog. They did all the hard work for you so all you have to do is sit back plan out your next project and reap the rewards of having a garment that you absolutely love. So head on over to voguefabricsstore.com. Check out the subscription catalog. You'll be getting the fall transitional the early fall catalog. I'm going to get one with you so let me know what you guys think of the fabrics that are in it. Come back to this video leave a comment. Obviously if you have any immediate questions about anything that I've said in this video please leave them in the comment section below. I will be checking it regularly as I always do. Those of you who are like I know you're never gonna see this when you leave your comment you're wrong. I see them all. I read every single comment it's one of my favorite parts so don't hesitate to leave anything you want in the comment section hopefully constructive and positive and something that will cheer me up rather than bring me down. But leave it in the comments and I will definitely see it. And I really hope that this little tip and this service that voguefabrics brings to you is truly valuable to me to you like it has been to me. But that's going to do it for me today. I will see you all very soon in my next video. Thanks for watching. Bye.