TheSewingGuru.com: reviewed!

Dear Blog,
I have been a bad blogger. I have been inconsistent and generally not given enough love to you or my readers. Can you ever forgive me? I promise to try harder from this point on.

Love n Kisses,
Kyle

Silliness aside, I have been a bit lacking in the regularly-updating department. Life's been pretty hectic between all the doctor visits, medical-research-whoring, and garden preparation. I haven't even gotten any sewing done. Not a single stitch; I feel like a total bum. Not at all like The Sewing Guru, who clearly has his act together.

The sewing guru

As I have mentioned before, I'm still pretty new to this whole sewing thing. What I do know is a combination of judicious googling, a few crash-course phone calls to Crissy, and lots of dismantled garments. Which is why I wish I'd found the sewing guru's site much sooner. To be blunt, it rocks.

I am a visual learner so the site's This Old House style videos are a major asset. Plus he does so much more than follow a simple pattern; he explains why each step is necessary. There's a course on basically every form of men's garment, and most women's basics too (Dress, skirt, jacket, trousers, blouse). He's also got lots of videos on sewing basics and machine maintenance.

My only real complaint is that he doesn't offer alternative routes for the home sewer who lacks professional equipment. An example of this is that he instructs viewers to overlock all edges. He fails to mention that if you are a hobbyist, and don't own an overlock machine, you can still pink your edges or use a bias tape. I think this oversight comes from the main strength of the series: The author appears to be a professional tailor.

He has several videos posted on YouTube, but he also offers a 2-day tree trial on his site, TheSewingGuru.com. I think that a beginning sewer could definitely do a lot worse than to drop $17/month to learn from a pro. It blew my mind that a trouser waist band had 6 pieces (plus another 4 of interfacing). The Simplicity pattern I have laying around here only calls for a single piece to be folded over!

So that's about it this time. Have any of you found any resources that you consider to be indispensable? Does having a visual reference make you want to take on a huge foolish project? I'm thinking that I need to make one more pair of trousers, 2 shirts, and then take on making a suit from scratch. Maybe February will be my month to shine (although, I think March is more likely).

Until next time,
Kyle