Paperback 8 x 8 in. 192 pages, with 100 full-color photos and 150 drawings
Published 2007 ISBN 978-1-56158-925-8 Product #070940
Reinventing tired garments and accessories can be a thrilling challenge especially once you're motivated by Subversive Seamster. Detailed instructions and techniques are clearly spelled out making them easy to apply to any castaway.
Written by young, hip fashionistas, Subversive Seamster will instruct, amuse and inspire you every step of the way. From shopping for fashion-finds-in-waiting to fine tuning your sewing skills, the authors reveal the secrets for transforming tacky or outdated into stylish, sexy, downright stunning!
STOP! Don't toss that awful bridesmaid gown till you've read this book!
- 30 incredible projects, from flirty skirts to trendy tops to bling earrings, many taking surprisingly little time
- Know right from the get-go: what you'll need, techniques you'll use, time to complete
- Projects just right for all levels
- Complete prep and finishing how-to's, from first cut to last divine detail
- Make It Your Way ideas to add personal pizzazz
- Sewing 201 chapter to "...kick your sewing skills up a notch!"
- Inside tips for bagging great bargains (and of course rescuing your own old friends from corner-of-the-closet oblivion)
- The most fun you'll ever have at your sewing machine!
About the subversive seamsters...
Melissa Alvarado, Hope Meng and Melissa Rannels co-own San Francisco's Stitch Lounge, a drop-in supportive sewing studio. Self-taught seamsters and fearless thrift shoppers, they're not only great sewers but great teachers as their friendly "here's how to do it" directions and "see how" drawings prove.
You may wonder, what's the big deal with this "thrifting" thing? Isn't it a bunch of old unwanted stuff that is out of style? Not true! Sure, lots of thrift shops have outdated satin bridesmaid's frocks, old tennis racket covers, and boring bathrobes that others have carelessly tossed aside. What they don't know is that these items have the potential to be halter tops, checkbook covers, and faux feather boas with a little help from your sewing machine. Subversive Seamster is your secret roadmap to the jewels of thrifting and the ins and outs of refashioning. This book holds our shortcuts, tips, and secrets to the wide world of inexpensive, individualized fashion.
Subversive Seamster is all about inspiration and transformation. It's about refashioning unwanted and tired clothes and giving them a whole new life in the front of your closet. While any clothing can be refashioned, thrift stores are a simple (and cheap) source for all sorts of pre-refashioned treasures! All too often your fellow thrift store shoppers look for ready-to-wear items and overlook the seemingly "hideous" sweater, not picturing what glorious mittens it would make. They may toss aside that leather vest, not knowing what a fabulous pair of earrings lie inside. Silly them! Fortunately, you are wiser and won't make such a rookie mistake.
Thrift stores are not like typical clothing stores--every garment is different from the next. For any given piece, there usually is only one available, and in one size. We subversive seamsters really value this part of the thrifting experience. Shopping is that much more exciting when you discover a unique garment that truly inspires you.
We organized the chapters in this book by types of clothing, just as thrift stores are generally organized. Find a top you love at the thrift store? Discover its potential in the hot tops chapter of Subversive Seamster! Find a cool pattern on a pair of old man pants? Turn that fun pattern into a hot new outfit from the pants chapter. Start with an item that inspires you and go from there! Tweak our ideas, and turn them into your own. Cheap thrift store finds give you license to cut without looking back!
Don't forget to look deeper. Look beyond the old sports jersey and see its potential. What's its future? Perhaps it will become a skirt? Or maybe a change purse? Perhaps that grandma nightgown will become a grocery bag? You just never know with us subversive seamsters. We're crazy like that!
Our clothes make a statement about who we are. What better way to say, "I am an individual!" than to wear one-of-a-kind items made from other one-of-a-kind items? We derive the most fashionable satisfaction knowing that we are reusing and recycling what already exists in this material world--and looking damn good doing it!
Now c'mon, let's get our refashion on, thrift store style!
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