I was lucky enough to spend a day this past weekend at Running With Scissors in Sheffield, teaching some lovely people to make a shirt in a day. It is every bit as ambitious as it sounds.
But they were well up for a challenge and they did magnificently.
Up to and including this course, I’ve been making custom patterns for each attendee, according to measurements provided. Which amounts to an extra day of work, unfortunately. Normally I don’t mind because it’s fun, but these days I have, like, three other potential uses of that said day.
So in future, we are going to break the course in to a “draft your own pattern to your chosen measurements” day and a “make the resulting shirt” day. Which I think will be a genuine improvement, because if you can learn to draft a custom pattern, and learn to make the shirt, you can just make shirts for everyone you know for the rest of your life. What’s not to love?
So yeah, I had five lovely people on the course this time and they all, as usual, had a range of really nice fabrics (though Phoebe went conservative with white!) and a lovely sense of fun on the day. I love teaching that course.
The best bit is seeing people be pleased with themselves as they achieve something really quite difficult that they didn’t realise they could do.
It is a bit of a brain-meltingly intense day; a shirt in a day is ambitious even if you DO know what you’re doing when you set out. And in truth, we’ve never once managed to actually get the buttons on on the day.
But still, people’s shirts were absolutely beautiful, and rather inspired me to make a shirt or two of my own.
It’s just a pity I have to use up some of the *mountain* of fabric I already have, rather than going out and acquiring more. They say buying materials and doing craft are two different hobbies. I quite agree.
Anyway, fabulous job, folks, thank you so much for attending! See you for the Pants course in July.
