NEW Club announcement - Clothing Club!

Hi All, It's Gayle here. Its with a bitter sweet feeling as I dust off the blog that was formerly penned by our beloved Camilla. As some of you may know, she left us in November 2021 and I simply haven't had the heart to start it up again... Until now.
	It seams fitting (see what I did there?) to use this platform to talk about sewing, projects, ideas, patterns, favorite tools, and things I haven't thought of quite yet. I decided  to start by using this space to re-introduce myself to you the way in which I entered the sewing world - as a garment sewist.
I was born in the 1970s as an only child with parents afraid to let me play with anything that would cause damage to me. The terms "tooth buster," "nose crusher," "paralyzer" were all used to describe a hobby horse, swing set and roller skates. So, you can imagine that asking for a device as dangerous as a needle rhythmically penetrating material 600 times a minute was not on my Parents' list of appropriate "toys." Alas, it was the thing I most dreamed of... well, except for front row Duran Duran tickets and a Sony Walkman.
	As I grew older and was trusted with scissors and a needle, I took up knitting, crocheting, needle point and other less dangerous endeavors in the crafting world. Remember latch-hook? this lead to a curious occurrence one summer morning when my Mom pulled out an old G.C. Murphy garment bag and told me that I could "do something with them." What was I going to do with old cocktail dresses from the sixties? They were not my aesthetic at all. Where was the black mesh, bullet belt or red Scottish plaid? So uncool. For the sake of curiosity I decided to take them apart at the seams.
Years earlier, I had a doll purchased at Toys R Us packaged in a box called "Fashions by Me." The doll had slits down the sides of the arms, under the arms and down the sides of the body and inner and outer legs. The package included fabric swatches to be cut from patterns included with the doll.
	I cut everything, made several looks for "Me," (yes, that's what I named this doll), and made clothing that I fashioned off of What I saw on American Bandstand or Soul Train (MTV would come to our neighbor hood about a year later) from my Mom's old dresses. A question I often asked my Mom was "can I get more things to play with 'Me'?" My Mom would answer, "Gayle Lynn, that sounds awful, don't ask that again!" Why did my Mom hate my favorite toy?
It was definitely that package labeled "Fashions by Me" that molded the Shop Keeper, Chief Creative Officer and Floor Mopper that you all affectionately know as Gayle from BERNINA of Naperville (When I started Kindergarten, I made it my life's mission to drop the Lynn)!

So now that we got ALL of that out of the way, How does Clothing Club work...

This club is dedicated to any sewist out there wanting to share sewing experience, learn how to sew garments, get help with fitting a pattern, try new techniques and sew along with some pretty funny folks here at the store on Friday nights! If you are not local and can't make it, we can Zoom you in but we will not be recording the session.

How does it go?:

• Our first session will meet April 11, 6-8PM and we will meet the second Friday night of each month after that at the same time, 6-8PM
• We will introduce ourselves to the group and pick a pattern to sew 
  • We are all going to be sewing the pattern for ourselves, so we will vote on a pattern that everyone likes
• How long will it take us to make it? We don't know, but we will help, learn and encourage each other along the way.
• If you do not join us every month, or get on board straight away, don't worry - Gayle will be chronicling the progress right here on our store's blog 
  

Who's in? Each session there will be sewing, or cutting, or fitting, or planning... And we can't underestimate the power of a group of like minded sewists spilling the tea, right?

SIGN UP FOR COTHING CLUB TODAY!