Dressmaking: The Easy Guide: Mix and match skirts, sleeves and necklines for over 80 stylish variations

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Extra copies of the full-size pattern sheets/pattern templates exclusive to Dressmaking: The Easy Guide by Helen Rhiannon are available here. Selecting patterns can be daunting when you're new to sewing, luckily most brands state the difficulty on their packaging so you can stick to beginner designs until you feel ready to graduate to the next stage. You are not tied into a contract which means if you change your mind, there are no cancellation fees.

There's also an in-depth section of adapting patterns (after all no pattern will fit you perfectly without! All the instructions have been thoroughly tested with Helen’s army of ladies who range from small to curvy, so you can be confident that the patterns will work for you! Nothing beats practice, so take the opportunity to mess around with any fabric scraps before starting on any projects. Helen is an award-winning fashion designer creating beautiful, timeless, handmade gowns from her home in Swansea, Wales. When selecting fabrics, Rhiannon recommends cotton for its affordability, crepe for its softness, and polyester satin for mimicking the sheen of silk on a budget.Look out for patterns which have been featured in Sew-Alongs or have accompanying video tutorials when you are starting out. Then, choose from a selection of basic, but beautiful, neckline, sleeve and skirt options – from classic V-necklines to flouncy Fifties-style circle skirts – to make your dress your very own. The key to this book lies in discarding conventional high street sizing and taking measurements of YOUR body. Double thread: This is used for stitches that need to be strong and secure, such as running stitches for gathering. Each garment maker sewing a seam here or a button there on huge assembly lines for the throwaway fashion industry.

Play with the stitch selector, choose stitch width and length and start to get a feel for how the fabric moves through the 'feed dogs' as you sew. She’s a sewing pattern pro with a skill for adjusting and hacking patterns to fit and for editing dressmaking instructions to make them accessible to sewists of all abilities.There's an ethical angle to sewing your own clothes too, especially if you also source your fabric carefully. The book then continues with lots of options for sewing four different necklines, four sleeve styles, five skirts and adding collars to your dresses. Any longer and you will struggle to pull it all through the fabric and risk the thread getting horribly tangled. Helen was fortunate to grow up by the picturesque coastline of Gower in Swansea, Wales, where she still lives.

If you’re working tacking stitches, though, it’s best to use a contrasting thread so it’s easy to see when removing them later. How to insert an invisible zip – give your outfits a professional finish by inserting an invisible zip. Along with sewing a button, stitching a straight line of stitches is an incredibly useful skill to have. You can also learn embroidery to add an extra flourish to all of your makes – take a look at our embroidery for beginners guide to get started.A rotary cutter – this tool which looks a bit like a pizza cutter makes it easy to cut out your pattern pieces. You just need to learn the basic skills to start sewing your own clothes and we're here to help get you started and share patterns with you. You will need to have access to Swedish tracing paper or tissue paper to trace your correct sized pieces and have a large table or the floor to work on. Thread is available in many forms with the big manufacturers offering a wide range of colours to suit any project. Nothing is left unexplained; and stunning images of the finished dresses, on a mannequin and on a model, are interspersed throughout the book to inspire your own finished pieces.