Stitch Classes

Hand sewing is a portable craft and a means to a meditative practice. The Slow Down & Stitch workshop series at Orange has offerings that are suitable for complete beginners as well as sewists who wish to extend their skills to incorporate the durability and elegance of hand-sewing and hand-finishing techniques. Enjoy the serene atmosphere of Orange as you learn skills, engage with beautiful materials, create one-of-a-kind objects, and make new friends. Browse the workshop descriptions and join in!

New classes will appear on EventBrite. Use the link above for full workshop descriptions and pricing.

Hand-sewing Resources

READING

Hand Sewing Clothing by Louisa Owen Sonstroem
Hand-sewn Inquiry (master’s thesis) by Sarah Woodyard
How to Sew Clothes by Amelia Greenhall and Amy Bornman
This Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History by Kassia St. Clair
Threads of Life: A History of the World through the Eye of a Needle by Clair Hunter
Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years by Elizabeth Wayland Barber
Peppermint Magazine

LISTENING

LINKS: 10 of the Best Sewing Podcasts So You Never Have to Sew Alone
Check Your Thread episode 15 featuring Louisa Owen Sonstroem
Love to Sew podcast episode featuring Bernadette Banner
Love to Sew podcast episode featuring Brooks Ann Camper
Sew & Tell podcast episode 77 with Alexis Bailey
The Long Thread podcast

WATCHING

Hand-sewing tutorials from Sewn Company
Strata Top sew along
Burnley & Trowbridge YouTube: historical sewing tutorials, tips, and more
Repair What You Wear: sewing skills and mending tutorials
Creativebug tutorials — available free with your Eastern Monroe Public Library card number

PATTERNS

All-well Box Top and Hacking Guide .pdf sewing pattern
Strata Top by Sew Liberated
100 Acts of Sewing

TOOLS

What You Actually Need to Make Clothing in an Apocalypse from Bernadette Banner
Burnley & Trowbridge Guide to Thread and Needles
How to Use a Thimble from Sewn Company (right handed)
How to Choose and Use a Thimble from Brooks Ann Camper
Sew with a Metal Thimble from Abby Cox
Level Up Your Thimble Game by Thread and Plume
Choosing the Right Needle for Your Hand Sewing by Thread and Plume
Burnley & Trowbridge needles and pins
Brooklyn Haberdashery

FABRIC & NOTIONS

Brooklyn General in Brooklyn, New York
Stonemountain & Daughter Fabrics in Berkeley, California
The Confident Stitch in Missoula, Montana
Firecracker Fabrics in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Fancy Tiger Crafts Co-op Engelwood, Colorado
Miss Matatabi Japanese Fabrics
Burnley & Trowbridge threads
Ramble and Roots: botanically-dyed fabric and threads
OAK Fabrics (online only)
Isee Fabrics (online only) certified organic, US-milled

Arrows and Doorways

The design for this super-cozy cowl was inspired by textiles in a hotel lobby. Concentric geometric shapes kept playing in my mind until finally I was able to chart the pattern and get it onto my needles. The interplay of this chevron-like patterning has a mesmerizing effect–while you’re knitting and when you wear the finished accessory.

Knit up a cowl with yarn from your stash, adding some magical new mini-skeins from your advent calendar, or exchange leftover yarn with a friend. The design invites frequent color changes, and makes an ideal knit for the advent season. It could be just as striking knit with two high-contrast colors.

While most cowls of this type are seamed within a band of a single color, this pattern incorporates a technique called stranded donut grafting, an incredibly clever and completely seamless graft that allows you to maintain colorwork patterning so that your starting and ending rounds are undetectable. Really! With many possibilities for color play and a new technique to add to your skill set, this cowl pattern is really an opportunity for knitters to level-up!

NEW PATTERN DESIGN!

ONE DARK BLUE NIGHT

This hat is the third in a series of patterns inspired by teachings in Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run with the Wolves. This time, I drew inspiration from Estés’ retelling of a Japanese tale, Tsukina Waguma or “The Crescent Moon Bear,” in which a young woman travels to the cave of an incredibly intimidating and ferocious bear. She makes several journeys to the cave, leaving food and quickly retreating, until “one dark blue night,” she musters the courage to stand her ground and ask for what she seeks--one hair from a moon-shaped patch on the bear’s chest--which she is granted. The young woman returns, triumphant, to the old healer who has sent her on this quest. She believes this single hair is the magic ingredient in solving the problem that plagues her. She holds it forth, but the healer tosses the hair into the flames. The young woman is in despair until she realizes the true lesson of her quest: that using her determination, courage, and patience, as she did with the crescent moon bear, will help her to confront the challenge at hand.

The moon phase motif of this colorwork hat is meant to capture the magic of a dark blue night--when the moon shines brightly overhead, the frosty air sparkles with possibility, and we succeed in summoning accumulated wisdom from deep within ourselves so that we can apply it to our own healing. Choose colors to conjure a wintery night sky, or select a palette of your signature colors.

Available on Ravelry December 20th.

Yarns at Yin Hoo

Stitch Classes

Hand-sewing Resources

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