 Hi you guys, Lindsay here. Welcome back to my channel, Inside the Hem. Today's video is really all for the beginner garment sewist. I have been getting a few comments here and there indicating that you are a quilter and you're trying out garment sewing for the first time or you're a beginner sewer without ever having sewn anything before or some of you have been doing bags or baby or children's clothes and you're trying to convert yourself into a sewist that can make their own wardrobe like I do and I am all for supporting that so today I thought I would give you five tips just for beginners. Now if you're a advanced or expert sewist and you've been doing this for a long time please continue to watch the rest of the video and leave your own tips in the comment section of this video. If you're a beginner and you watch the whole way through read through the comments and see what other people have to add to the conversation. These five that I have are certainly not the end all be all tips for beginners. They are just the five that over the past seven years I have thought back and said I really wish I knew that whenever I started sewing so check out the comment section start a little discussion amongst yourselves add some tips comment on them and we'll have a fun little party in the comment section but okay so my first tip for those of you especially who are coming from quilting or from bag making is step away from the quilter's cotton I know it's really pretty and those designs are to die for but unfortunately quilters cotton isn't the best for garment sewing it tends to be a little bit stiff it doesn't have a ton of drape it doesn't really hold up well over the years of because you know you have to wash your clothes a lot more than you would wash a quilt um so it doesn't really hold up great um so instead and I also I understand you lore of quilters cotton is that it's so easy to sew it's so easy to cut and press and all of those things that will help you make a super super successful garment but it's just not that great for garment sewing so what I would suggest instead is to check out other 100 cotton fabrics that just aren't made for quilting that would be cotton lawn LAWN or cotton voile or voile the O I L E um both of those are 100 cotton so again they're gonna wash up like you're used to they're gonna cut like you're used to not be super shifty they're going to sew like you're used to press like you're used to it's gonna be very similar to that quilter's cotton experience except they're gonna have a lot more drape a lot more body they're gonna hang more naturally from your 3d figure and they're gonna wash up really well and be really durable for years and years and years so that's step one or tip one um tip two is pick a pattern company and stick with it so this came from experience when I first started sewing I was just like I like that pattern I like that pattern and I was buying them all and trying to make them all and I wasn't ever getting any one of them really to fit right because they're all so different I mean when I make um McCall's pattern for example I am a size 14 when I make an itch to stitch pattern an indie um company I'm a six so if I had gone to McCall's and cut out a six thinking oh I'm a six and sewing patterns it would have been a disaster and vice versa so I think it's really important to pick one pattern company whether that be a big four simplicity's McCall's Vogue or Butterick or if you decide to go indie I mean Colette and Seamwork magazine have a huge library to choose from there's lots of other indie pattern companies that have many many many garments and different types of garments dresses tops bottoms so on and so forth where you could develop a little beginner wardrobe only using their patterns so their patterns are going to be drafted the exact same they're going to be scaled up and scaled down the same way and all of their instructions are going to be written in the same way as well so it'll kind of give you an idea of the order of the steps I mean pretty much they're the same from company to company but people just choose to say them in different ways so it'll kind of get you used to what like the kind of chronological order of sewing a garment is but in one person's voice so that it's not minced the words don't get switched up or confused or use a word that you're not used to it'll always be the same and the drafting is always the same so whenever you're making a garment you can really start to assess how it's fitting you know that throughout all of these mccalls patterns for example i'm a size 14 so if i make up a size 14 and it's really really baggy in the chest then i know in mccalls patterns i probably need to look into a small bust adjustment or anything along those lines if the shoulders aren't fitting right you know that in mccalls patterns i most likely need to do a shoulder adjustment and those can after you get familiar with that those adjustments can be analyzed critically from pattern company to pattern company because you know what to look for you know how it's supposed to fit and i think you'll just be more successful so try and pick one pattern company and stick with it i mean for at least like the five or ten garments you know just try a whole bunch of different ones from the same company so that you can really start to analyze how the clothes are fitting you what adjustments you might need for your body and to start to learn some of the ways that the instructions are written cool okay tip number three is don't make the free stuff now i know this is really hard to resist to you're on pinterest like every day now you're so excited you want to make all this stuff but it's so expensive especially those indy patterns they can be 15 20 a piece or you get impatient and you don't want to wait for a mccalls or big four sale and so you start going down the rabbit hole of free sewing patterns online and i'm just here to tell you as someone who's been down that path before they're not all great in fact most of them are pretty terrible now i am generally speaking here i know that there are outliers i know that there are the mega niels and veronica skirts of the world that are great and free i'm going to be doing a video very soon on awesome free sewing patterns but generally speaking don't do it you'll just end up being super super frustrated um because the patterns are free sometimes they take shortcuts that the they haven't been tested before there's no investment in them because they're not getting really anything back you don't know the kind of experience or education the pattern drafter has it could be it could be anything so my advice is just to stay away from them in the beginning subscribe to a service like seam work where you pay i think eight dollars a month and get access to two patterns that's plenty that is plenty and you're not paying an arm and a leg or wait for the mccalls and buttery and simplicity and vogue sales where you can get patterns for a dollar sometimes um but but try and stay away from the free patterns at least until i publish my free pattern video and you know that they're Lindsay approved then they're then they're probably good to go but that also means still tip number two applies so you still don't want to be going crazy trying all these different pattern designers so keep that in mind as well i just don't want you guys to get super frustrated and i feel like those free patterns can be very frustrating even for the experienced sewage i mean sometimes i look at those and i'm like what the heck are they even trying to say here okay my fourth tip is to subscribe to a fabric catalog companies like um i think it's fashion fabrics club gosh i hope that's right that does julie's picks i'll link it in the description box below um provide this awesome service where this woman named julie like the actual person goes out into the garment district in new york city and sources all of these really awesome fabrics and then they combine them all together in this like paper booklet i mean it's certainly not anything super fancy it's probably done on an office printer but they staple in actual samples of fabric so often and i know from my own experience too most of my fails in the beginning were because of poor fabric choice because i was trying to find the cheapest fabric i possibly could thinking that all fabrics worked for all projects and that's just not the way it goes with subscription services like julie's picks what they'll do is they'll tell you everything you need to know about the fabric so like the content like what it's made of um they'll tell you the stretch if it's a stretch fabric um obviously this the swatch is there so you can like feel it you know and they'll tell you the type of fabric it is you know is this mon is this voile is this you know jersey you know and so you can start to understand what the different fabrics are so when you see suggested fabrics on a pattern you're in your head you're going oh okay they're trying to get me to find some lightweight drapey knits for example so then you're thinking okay now i need to find some jerseys or you know like your mind just starts to work that way once you educate yourself on the different types of fabric the other really cool thing about julie's picks is that the fabrics are sold at a discount so you can get a lot of fabrics for like five six dollars a yard um so if the project does end up being a fail it's not a huge loss monetarily i mean you still spent your time on it um but they are more affordable than just going crazy and going on mood.com and finding a jersey or whatever it is there even fabric.com can be kind of expensive i would seriously check out julie's picks not sponsored in any way i just think that they do a really good job there's a wide variety of fabrics there they're picked pretty recently so they apply to whatever season we're in um so you're not going to be getting like heavy wools in the summertime um and you can touch the fabrics which is really important whenever you're trying to buy fabrics online or at least learning how to buy fabrics online and they're affordable so i would go there so start educating yourself on fabric as soon as possible and then my final tip this one also is pretty tough but it is to not take inspiration from ready to wear you are going to see a ton of stuff at your favorite store whether it be anthropology or antaylor loft or wherever it is that you like to shop and you can probably find a sewing pattern that looks a lot like that garment and a lot of times it's just gonna be too difficult of a pattern for you if you've only ever if you like never sewn a garment before or only sewn a couple of them or only ever done kids clothes you know doing something with like a bias cut and a really big flounce and you know all of these little fiddly bits is just gonna be too much of a learning curve for one pattern i think that when patterns say that it's advanced or that it's you know a learn to sew pattern that they really mean that and then there's a reason why they've categorized them in that way the only outlier i think is very easy vogue very easy vogue to me although it's an easy silhouette i feel like their instructions are still pretty vague but for the most part anything that says that it's easy or designed for beginners or for people learning to sew are going to be a better bet for you and even if it's not like perfectly something you would buy in the store you're going to get so much satisfaction out of having a garment that you love and looks professional and is perfect in your mind more so than saying look at this ready to wear thing that i knocked off you'll get there i promise you will be eventually be able to knock off any garment that you see out in the world but in the beginning try and stick with those easy easy patterns that said i'm going to roll into something really cool and fun starting next friday i am doing another sew along and i know my regulars love sew alongs and i love doing them but this time i'm working with mccall pattern company again and we decided that we were going to do a pattern designed for beginners we know that there are so many of you out there who are watching these videos reading the blogs on instagram all the time and you want to get better and we want to help you get better so we are going to be tackling a mccalls learn to sew for fun pattern it's a really cute pattern with this like halter top draw string it has a um a waist like a cinched waistband casing and a variety of lengths to it so you can make a couple different versions and have them all look different um but it's going to be an eight week sew along so we're really going to slow things down we're going to break things down step by step for all of you so that at the end of the eight weeks you will have a garment that i think you will be really really proud of we're going to cover which fabrics to look for we're going to cover which size you should be making and we're going to go over each individual step of the pattern so i'm really excited about it if this video was at all helpful or interesting to you um i think you'll really enjoy the sew along be sure to tap the little bell on the on my youtube channel that'll notify you whenever new videos are posted so that you can watch them as soon as they come out you're going to want to watch next friday's video um so that you can get all the details for your pattern and your fabrics you can go ahead and buy that and be ready to start sewing the following week um and even if you feel like a learn to sew for fun is too basic for you maybe do it anyways and just brush up on some of those very very basic sewing skills you know how sometimes it's like nice to do like a palette cleanser for those of us that are making like really challenging patterns a lot sometimes it's neat nice and neat night to go back to basics and do a palette cleanser where you can just really take your time doing each step absolutely perfectly and not rushing or cutting any corners you know what I mean that's what i'm kind of getting out of doing this um beginner pattern so if you're more experienced and you're thinking what am i going to do with a beginner pattern maybe you'll enjoy it you know kind of just taking a breath a little bit with the sewing and not always being so like aggressive with the skills um but that is going to do it for this video i really hope you guys enjoyed it and learned a little bit of something like i said if you have tips to add based on your experience and your expertise leave them in the comments below and if you're a beginner read those comments they might have something you know completely new added to this conversation so i am gonna run that's gonna do it for me today i will see you all very soon bye