Gertie teaches and holds private lessons at the Sewing Studio. This place is AMAZING! What is also brilliant is that you can rent space here to sew--it only costs $13.50 a week (only £8.50) to use the space an unlimited amount of times during one week. They have amazing space, huge cutting tables, pressing stations, loads of sewing machines and overlockers, changing area, etc.
Oona and I decided that we would each pick one thing to focus on in our lessons. I choose bound buttonholes. It was a method I hadn't tried but knew we could easily cover in an hour. I'm so glad we did! It is amazing to see someone do it in person. So how did we do? Well, we watched and listed to Gertie do the buttonhole first and then we gave it a try. Then we both forgot our patch!!! hahaha...that means that our buttonholes wouldn't have had lips! Too funny. Gertie gently asked if we were missing anything...oh yes! The whole second part of the bound buttonhole!!
Another funny moment came when we were marking the length of the buttonhole. Gertie hands me this large clear ruler with a curvy side and a regular side with all sorts of markings. I may not have mentioned before but I have very few sewing gadgets and I didn't know how to use the ruler!! hahahaha. I was quite befuddled being able to SEE through it! lol.
In the end we both made lovely looking buttonholes. Gertie's buttonhole is on the left and my very first one is on the right! I am quite proud of it (and it wouldn't gap if I steam ironed it a bit!!)
For the second part of the class we focussed on draping! That was loads of fun and something I wouldn't have thought to do! Gertie had this amazing 1/2 scale mannequin (named 'tiny') and we learned how to drape and then transfer our design into a pattern.
I draped a pencil skirt (yawn) and Oona went to town and draped this amazing pleated blouse! It was so much fun!
Gertie is such a lovely person in real life and it seriously is one of the best sewing days I have ever had! If you are ever in NYC--even just for a short trip--it's well worth it to take a lesson with Gertie! I learned so much and had so much fun!
Safe blog
In other news, a super big thank you to Elise for alerting me that she received a malware message when she accessed my blog. We ran loads of diagnostics and were able to pinpoint it to a blog listed on my blogroll (thanks also to Elise's sending us the exact wording in the message she received!!). I've removed that blog (and gotten in touch with the owner and sent her some helpful tools/links). We reran all the tests and my blog is completely safe. YAY! Thanks again, I really appreciate it!!
