Category: Uncategorized

Mrs Bowden’s Thursday top tip – needle sizes If you go to a quality haberdashers you can be amazed at the variety of hand sewing needles available to you. It can be a little confusing, so hopefully, this top tip will help. Ordinary hand sewing needles, called SHARPS, are often sold in mixed size packs.…
Read more

If you are having to create buttonholes on a garment be sure you know the correct direction they should ‘lie’. You should consider where the greatest point of stress on the button is going to be. This means the buttonholes will need to be made parallel (vertically) to the edge on the front of a…
Read more

Ever had this problem? The thread is pulling and you can’t remove your fabric from the machine…..there seems to be extra threads pulling from the bottom too?   Don’t get yourself into an unnecessary muddle on your machine. When you have finished a line of stitching make sure your turn the balance wheel towards you…
Read more

I’m off on my holiday’s very soon and inevitably my mind turns to packing and ironing and WHAM!, it hit me. My next top tip. Have you had the dilemma of having to squash your precious patterns back into the envelope – trying to avoid damaging the pattern as well as the envelope!? Well, this…
Read more

Mrs Bowden’s top tip – button through As you may know from my post of last week I promised I would show you how to create a ‘button-through’ version of the Simplicity 1459. The original design had a buttoned bodice and then a zip inserted into the side seam. The buttons were adding a stylish…
Read more

Mrs Bowden’s top tip – adding a pocket Having made Simplicity’s 1459 peachy little 1950’s repro dress a number of times, I thought I would shake things up a bit. You may know that I have a penchant for collecting vintage haberdashery as well as absolutely adoring HRH The Queen. I recently celebrated a birthday…
Read more

I’ve been thinking about some awkward sewing dilemma’s and how specialist tools can be fantastic for helping one out in sticky situations.  Whilst cruising around my local poundland I stumbled on this rather cute manicure set.  I do try and look after my nails but actually, when it comes down to it I would rather…
Read more

Seams (!) to me that the leap to making garments from craft sewing is a pretty big one for many starter sewists sew I have  been trying to anticipate some of the skills that my sewing peeps may wish to acquire and run short courses to deliver them.  Hence running “knickers” as a means of…
Read more

If you know me,  you will know that I am forever pursuing either vintage clothes in a size to fit (tricky as I do have a full figure) or I make my own.  I also have a bit of a  ‘thing’ for vintage or vintage style patterns.  I can easily justify my frequent purchases of…
Read more

Way back in May I was musing about why I love to sew and thought I would like to find out about why other sewists do it! I set up a little competition to win this cute purse – ideal for storing a few crafty bits of loveliness and wanted to share the entries with…
Read more