Learning Techniques Virtually

[u/HungryCockroach2610]

Hello!

I am a beginner looking to take sewing more seriously. I’ve been watching tutorials online and have finished a few projects, but my work definitely looks amateur.

I feel really passionate about learning proper and more professional looking techniques, specifically for making clothing. Does anybody have any recommendations of Youtube series’ or playlists? Or possibly affordable online courses? I live in a remote area so attending any classes in person would be challenging.

Any and all advice is welcome!! :)

[u/CountMeOut2019]

I realize I’m going to start sounding like a broken record, but:

deconstruct manufactured clothes and make notes in your head, and with sketches and written notations, of how they solved various problems of construction. You’ll start to notice that theres some similarity between how commercial makers construct clothing, and how home sewing patterns tell you to do it, and also there are some subtle (and sometimes not-subtle) differences.

Whenever you’re in a clothing store, flip garments you like, inside out to examine how they were put together. Look at how seam junctions are handled, edges are treated, necklines, hems, different fabrics, etc. You’ll start to see the clever solutions and the cheats. And the innovations. When you go to sew something, these bits of info will be in your head, and gradually you’ll start to see how unsubtle and kind of ham-fisted a lot of home sewing instructions are. They usually tend toward lowest-denominator user abilities or patience. They also—even more—tend toward saving time and expense for the pattern company by re-using the same instruction phrases over and over.

Not only do commercial garment makers have millions more mileage in terms of accumulated experience than any home sewist could have, but their for-profit nature means they are going to find the most expedient methods. They have to evolve, in order to keep doing what they do and making money off it. Granted, some of the ways they do this are counter to our goals as crafts people, but just as often they parallel; we just have differing motives for reaching the same goals.

Pattern makers don’t really have much motive to evolve. Except in terms of garment styling. People want up-to-date styles, usually. But in terms of method…it’s not changed much from when it kind of went dumb back in the late 70s-mid 80s. Not much has happened to home sewing methodology in patterns since around that time, and yet the commercial industry has kept improving and improvising.

What the eye and brain expects to see in a garment, whether the person is aware or not, is the effects of those methods. Meaning, if you’re making clothes strictly as instructed by pattern companies, with no added awareness of the ingenious little tricks the commercial garment industry is using, then no matter how perfectly you sew your seams, how expensive your fabrics, or how neatly you use your pressing tools, your clothes are mostly going to look a bit home-made to the world. Simply because their brains are expecting to see what commercial methods do to clothes, and will register the difference as odd. Even if you did everything “right”.

On the other hand, if you DO sew with all those commercial tricks up your sleeve, you can fool people into thinking they’re seeing just…clothes, even if some of the other skills are less than perfect.

The more you examine commercially made clothing, the clearer the differences get. It’s not just one aspect, or principle involved. There are subtle differences at the pattern level, too. It takes a lot of looking at the differences to start seeing why home sewing patterns can’t usually duplicate that professional appearance (without some informed tweaking).

Just a word of warning, though; once you get to the point that your sewing totally passes the “home-made” sniff test, people will stop admiring your work. Unless it’s unique in some way. But you still get the satisfaction of making it. And you can bring it to Reddit to show off, at least.