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Sewing-a-GoGo, Brighton and Hove (2026)

16/08/2025

I’ve hand sewn the bust darts and definitely managed to have more control over them hand sewing them 🤗

I decided to add some bias binding to the dart edges so they didn’t have a raw finish.

I’ve also sewn in the front facing using a back stitch by hand.

Now it’s time to hand sew the darts and zip into the back 🪡

♥️

13/08/2025

🪡 MY HAND SEWING ESSENTIALS🪡

I love to use Scanfil 100% organic cotton when hand sewing my garments. I find this thread nice and strong and easily glides through most fabrics when hand sewing.

It also comes in a nice variety of colours and is easy to obtain online.

I highly recommend the John James Sharps needles in size 3/9. I tend to use Size 9 for a lot of my hand sewing.

I use the beeswax to glide my thread through to make it stronger whilst sewing.

A lot of people tend to pre-cut the threads, glide them through the beeswax, place them under a light cloth them iron them as it’s the heat that sets the beeswax in the cotton and strengthens it.

I don’t tend to apply the heat until after I’ve stitched and sewn the garment as I don’t pre cut my threads. I cut and use as I go.

You still get the strength from the beeswax on the thread after sewing once ironed although you potentially lose some beeswax in the fabric whilst sewing because you’ve not heat set it first.

I’ve personally never noticed any beeswax residue from doing it the way I do so am happy to continue to do that 🤗

My silver antique thimble is from around 1926 and fits the tip of my middle finger perfectly and is an absolute joy to use 😃

I’ve experimented with different thimbles in my hand sewing journey…a cheap nickel thimble turns the tip of my finger green as I have a nickel allergy and I never really enjoyed using leather thimbles.

I find the silver thimble very comfortable and easy to sew with. It’s also really pretty to look at whilst sewing 💕💕💕

Not in photo here but I also use embroidery scissors for cutting my thread.

13/08/2025

I’m going to be sewing view 2 of this dress pattern which I believe was heavily influenced by a 1960s Biba Dress.

I’ve had the fabric for several years, which is vintage one I bought off a friend who was having a clear out of old fabric.

I believe the fabric is 100% cotton and has a nice woven feel to it.

I had just enough fabric for this dress pattern so it’s nice to be finally using this fabric and because it’s cotton, I know it’s going to be really lovely to hand sew.

I made this dress several years ago with a different fabric on my sewing machine and I really hated the lack of control I had on the machine making it, especially on the dart area. These bust darts are very ‘Biba’ as they are a square shape and trying to place them together on the machine and sew them at a fairly quick speed proved very difficult for me.

I feel hand sewing them will give me much better control and a better finish.

After reading through Louisa’s book, I’m most likely going to finish the majority of the seams with a hand sewn French style seam.

This one is definitely slow fashion to the extreme and I really don’t know how long this dress will take me to sew 🪡

I plan to post photos on my work in progress as I complete each stage so you will get a better understanding of how this dress is hand sewn together (if you’re interested 😂)

I’m really looking forward to seeing how this dress turns out 🤗

I cut out the pattern last night which didn’t take me long to do.

I’m hoping to find some time today to stay stitch the front and possibly sew the front darts but I’m not going to rush this.

It is a slow process but I find hand sewing very meditative and relaxing like hand knitting so I know I’m going to really enjoy it 🤗

12/08/2025

I was super excited when my copy of The Handsewn Wardrobe by arrived in the post last week that I had pre-ordered a while back from

The book on the left was Louisa’s first book about hand sewing that I’ve referenced so much over the past few years in my hand sewing journey.

I was therefore really thrilled to see Louisa was releasing her second book with information about pattern cutting garments and the construction of them.

I originally learnt to sew garments by hand with a few years ago and that gave me the confidence to give hand sewing a go.

I find myself hand sewing lots of ‘bits’ of my machine sewn garments that I’ve recently made, especially hems and other finishes.

This book is amazing and I’ve been reading it intensely in my spare time since receiving it.

Whilst I’m not currently going to sew any patterns from the book, it has inspired me to completely sew a garment by hand again🪡

I had a fabric and pattern in mind a while back that I put all together in my ‘to do’ pile and now feel is the time to hand sew it together.

Louisa gives great instructions in the book on garment construction by hand with the best sewing techniques to use on various parts of the garment.

I will be using Louisa’s construction methods as a guide and look forward to showing you the garment I’ll be making with a vintage sewing pattern I’ve chosen 😃

05/08/2025

Here is my hand smocked summer dress that I managed to finish on Saturday 🪡

Unfortunately the weather has been quite overcast/raining the past few days so I’ve not been able to wear it out and have some proper photos taken in all it’s glory 🤗

I was keen to show you what it looks like on so did my best to get some photos of it whilst indoors.

It’s a maxi dress style. I didn’t use a dress pattern for this project, I just cut two basic rectangles for my height and used a smocking pattern that was used on a bandeau style dress in the Rocking Smocking book from

I used my to gather my rectangle fabric ready for smocking.

I needed approximately 4 metres of fabric for this dress that was 150cm wide to make sure I had sufficient fabric to cover the pleated bust area.

This was a bit of an experiment for me so I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on fabric in case it didn’t work out.

I therefore purchased this cute ditsy floral fabric from for £6.99 a metre. In view of the price, I bought 5 metres in the end in case I needed extra.

I was really pleased with the fabric and it is a nice crisp cotton, making it perfect for pleating.

I hemmed the top by hand, hand smocked the panels then sewed the front and back together.

The finished smocked pleating was a little loose around my top bust area so I inserted some elastic on the very top part to bring the pleating in a little more and I’m now really happy with how it fits.

I cut 8 x more smaller rectangle pieces for the tie straps (2 x pieces were sewn together for each strap) and I was inspired to add some vintage I purchased on eBay after seeing this style of strap in some of the Smock London bandeau style dresses which, I thought looked really pretty 🤗

I used mouline thread for the hand smocking that I split into 3 strands.

I’m really pleased with how the dress turned out. I really love how the hand smocking has shaped the dress and I’m looking forward to wearing it when it’s sunny in Brighton again 😎

04/08/2025

I’m loving the vintage that I decided to add to the edges of my tie straps of my hand smocked summer dress.

I managed to finish the dress on Saturday and I look forward to sharing photos of the finished dress 🤗

24/07/2025

Here are some photos of me in my 1970’s hand smocked blouse I recently finished 🤗

I’m really pleased with how it’s turned out and in the summer months I can also wear it as an open shirt with a vest top underneath 😎

I will definitely be wearing it lots and I absolutely love the fabric and buttons I added 💕💕💕

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22/07/2025

Here is another hand smocking project I’ve been working on ready for the summer ☀️

I got this smocking pattern from the Rocking Smocking Book 🤩

I’m going to be sewing the dress together using my 1960s Singer Featherweight 221k Sewing Machine 💕💕💕

A couple of months ago I treated myself to this extension table designed especially for my white featherweight from who are the UK stockists of supplies 🤗

The extension table is a great addition to my machine because it gives a more sturdy surface for me to sew ladies garments and also quilt projects 👍

The dress design is just 2 straight pieces of rectangle fabric I cut and are shaped around the bust using the smocking pattern.

I will be adding straps to this dress and hope to find some time later on this week or next week to finish it around my work commitments.

I’ll share a photo of the straps once I start working on those 🪡

20/07/2025

I finally found some time yesterday to finish this 1970’s hand smocked blouse.

I had originally started this project in January!

After finishing the hand smocking, which was quite quick to do, this poor blouse then subsequently sat in pieces in my studio for several months waiting to be sewn together.

I haven’t sewn buttonholes in a while but I forget how easy they are to do on my Bernina 1008 sewing machine (it has a super 6 step button hole dial and it’s one of the reasons I got this particular machine 20 plus years ago 🤗).

The fabric was a cute vintage one I bought from last year and the buttons were vintage ones that also bought last year at Brighton Marina boot fair.

I interfaced the groovy 70’s collar with a very light baby interfacing (that is often used in heirloom garments) from Christine

I found this interfacing gave the collar the soft movement I wanted instead of being stiff but still added some structure.

I also got to do a bit of hand sewing on this blouse (which I love to do 🤩) and that was on the hem, inner button hole facing, sewing on the buttons and slip stitching the collar facing.

I overlocked the seams using my Bernina L460 Overlocker which is always a real pleasure to use since it always seems to automatically tension correctly to my fabrics without me having to adjust tension and it’s super easy to change overlocker threads. I tend to only overlock using 3 threads rather than 4 as I feel it overlocks really well this way.

The Bernina overlockers aren’t the cheapest and I saved up my wages for months years ago to purchase one from my local sewing machine shop, but I’m so glad I did! My overlocker I had prior to that was around £100 and was a real fiddle to change threads and never tensioned that well on my fabric so I always dreaded using it.

In my 30 years of sewing, I would say these sleeves were one of the most difficult I’ve ever set into a garment and ended up spending a couple of hours trying to get them right!

In view of that, I won’t be in a rush to sew this pattern again 😂 but I’m pleased with the finished result!

I’ll try and take some proper photos this week of me in it 🤗

28/04/2025

I’ve recently been very busy working on knitwear things with and so I’ve currently got a heap of sewing projects I need to start/finish which I’m hoping to work on shortly 🤗

I’ve made some progress on my 1970s hand smocked blouse and I’ll be posting some photos of that project soon!

In the meantime, I wanted to share a photo of this fab sunglasses case stand 😎 that I purchased at the weekend in Brighton from

I absolutely love it! And can now find all my sunglasses easily instead of wasting time hunting through various bags I left them in after a previous wearing! 💕💕💕

I know she had them in 3 different colour choices but I really loved the purple and yellow flower design 🤩

Thank you Zoe for creating such a fab stand that looks great in my home! 😎

21/02/2025

Here is the back view of this wonderful pattern by 💕💕💕

Click on link in bio if you’d like to watch the video of me sewing this kit together 🤗

20/02/2025

Here is my finished Jerkin made with kit.

I really enjoyed sewing this together and am loving the 1970s vibe 💕💕💕

Click on link in bio if you’d like to see the Vlog of this make on my YouTube channel 🤗

Sewing-a-GoGo

16/08/2025

13/08/2025

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05/08/2025

04/08/2025

24/07/2025

22/07/2025

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