Valentines Day Vintage

This is what I woke up to this morning. I am a lucky girl and I have a super thoughtful boyfriend.

Over the weekend we headed out to Montclair to celebrate the 1 year anniversary of a friends Vintage Boutique called Garnish.

Talk about coveting everything in a store! I love my friend Lisa's taste and the way she had the store laid out so neat and adorable totally gave me shoppe envy! I could have walked around in there for hours just looking at every last little detail of every item.

I seemed to have recently begun this obsession with old mechanical clocks. I think it has something to do with my obsession with old mechanical sewing machines, but who knows. They're just pretty cute too.

Anyway - I saw this clock and fell in love. I  totally couldn't justify my purchasing it cause I just don't need it. I kept shopping around to find a little something a little more practical to spend my money on that night. (HA - practical.) Not sure if I can call what bought practical, but I guess they are a bit more useful than the clock

I wound taking home a baking book from 1961 and a mechanical egg beater. Again - am loving anything mechanical that is not electric these days!

Here they are:

Saturday Morning, I immediately had to make something from my new book. (see - totally practical!)
I knew I had some poppy seeds in my pantry, so lemon poppy seed pound cake it is.
Oops, no recipe for that in my new cook book. But that's okay, I will happily make do.

I used the Basic Pound Cake recipe found on page 116 and added some lemon juice and poppy seeds and all was well and right in the world.

Here is the recipe in case you are interested:

Basic Pound Cake

A delicious, old-fashioned cake, especially good toasted (from the book, not me)

6 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 cup butter
2 cups sifted flour
1 teaspoon vanilla
(I added the juice of one lemon, some zest & half a bottle of poppy seeds)

Set oven to 350 degrees. Grease a deep, 9 inch tube pan and dust with flour.
In a large bowl, combine eggs and sugar and beat for a minute. Set bowl over a saucepan of hot water. Place saucepan over low heat for about 10 minutes, or until eggs are slightly warmer than lukewarm. Don not let water boil. Stir eggs occasionally while they are being heated to prevent them from cooking on the the bottom of the bowl.

While eggs are warming, cream butter and flour till light and fluffy. Add vanilla.

When eggs are lukewarm, beat them until cool, thick and tripled in bulk.  Quickly stir 1/4 of beaten eggs into creamed mixture. Pour mixture over remaining beaten eggs. Fold in gently. Be careful not to overmix.

Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake about 50 minutes, or until cake is golden brown and pulls away from sides of pan.

Megan Side note: All that business about warming the mixture over the hot water was skipped in my version. I just made sure the eggs weren't cold when I mixed them with everything else. I did this by letting them sit under warm water coming out of the tap of the sink. I also didn't really beat the eggs as they said. I beat them with the sugar with my new beater, but then procedeed to add all the ingrediants and bake it.

The more I think about it, I really didn't follow the directions at all (suprise, suprise). But my turned out okay. I had to take it out of the oven a bit early cause I had to head to work so there was some oozing batter when I cut into it later that day when I tried a pice. This was because it wasn't quite cooked all the way through. But I have to say, I am a big fan of any cake just a little bit underdone. Is that gross?

The stuff dreams are made of... when you're six.

We had to share some photos with you with a project we finished up for Christmas. This pink, dreamy canopy was commissioned for one of our favorite 6 year old sewing students by her mom. In all our holiday frenzy to get orders finished up, we did not have a chance to photograph the finished project. But luckily her mom sent me these photos of the canopy hanging in Ruby's room.

Gosh, I wish I had one of these when I was six.

What is Fashion Draping?

We are getting so excited about the return of our Beginners Fashion Draping Lab happening on Sunday afternoons starting on on September 11th! But it occurred to me recently that perhaps some people aren't exactly sure what "draping" is. So I thought I might take a second to clarify a bit.

In a nutshell, fashion draping is the process of taking a sketch of a clothing design and turning it into a pattern that can then be made into the actual garment. Because our bodies are in 3-D and patterns are created in 2-D, the process of draping is what you do on the dress form to create the flat pattern pieces that are eventually cut out of the fabric.

Maybe I am making this more confusing that it needs to be. It's actually a pretty simple process that our instructor, Alisha Forler is pretty darn good at. And she's excited about helping you learn how to do it too.

But before you take the class, take a second to read this excellent article from Designer Nexus explaining the process and why people who are interested in designing their own clothes should learn how to drape.


Check out the full article from their website here.

What is Fashion Draping and Why Should
Apparel Designers Learn How to Drape?

Posted on Apr 05, 2011

 

Fashion draping is an important part of fashion design. Draping for fashion design is the process of positioning and pinning fabric on a dress form to develop the structure of a garment design. A garment can be draped using a design sketch as a basis, or a fashion designer can play with the way fabric falls to create new designs at the start of the apparel design process. After draping, the fabric is removed from the dress form and used to create the sewing pattern for the garment.

Fashion draping and fitting are usually done with muslin (an inexpensive, unbleached, loosely woven cotton) to resolve any design and fitting issues of a garment before cutting the pattern in real fabric. However, it is important to drape using a fabric that has similar drape characteristics (the way it falls and folds) as the real fabric of the finished garment. Muslin comes in a variety of weights, and inexpensive synthetic fabrics can also be used in fitting and draping for apparel design.

Fashion designers drape garments in sections i.e.: front bodice, back bodice, front skirt, back skirt etc. and only the right side of the garment (when worn) is draped, unless the apparel design is asymmetrical.
The general process for how to drape for fashion is as follows:

• Pieces of muslin are cut and prepared. This includes measuring, tearing, blocking, pressing, and marking grain lines and other important reference lines.
• Now the actual “draping” begins. The fabric is pinned to the dress form and positioned to form various darts, tucks, gathers, etc., which give shape and fit to the garment.
• Once the desired design is achieved, the muslin is marked while still on the dress form to indicate where the seam lines, darts, etc. are located on the fabric.
• When marking is finished, the muslin is removed from the dress form and laid flat on a table for “truing”. Truing is the process of using rulers and design curves to connect, smooth out and finalize the markings.
• Once truing is complete, seam lines are added and excess material is cut away.
• The muslin is then pinned together (with all darts pinned) and placed back onto the dress form to check for fit accuracy and to drape any additional parts of the garment.
• Once all pieces are the garment are draped, they are all pinned together and placed on the dress form to check for fit accuracy.
• When the apparel designer is satisfied with the look and fit of the pinned garment, the muslin is removed from the dress form, pressed flat, and all seam lines, grain lines, markings, notches, etc. are transferred to paper, creating the sewing pattern for the garment.

Why Should Fashion Designers Learn How to Drape?

While the majority of companies in the fashion industry no longer use draping as part of the design process, draping is a key skill which allows apparel designers to understand what creates a great fit and how to achieve it. If a garment sample fits poorly, a designer who is familiar with how darts and seams give shape to garments can spot what is creating the fit issue and advise the factory how to correct the problem.

However, the art of draping isn’t completely lost; in high fashion, couture fashion houses, evening, and lingerie companies most garments are created through draping. When draping a garment, the designer can immediately see what her apparel design will look like on the body, and immediately correct any fit or design problems before putting anything down on paper. In addition, some apparel designs are just impossible to make via flat patternmaking and need to be draped first. And some fabrics need to be experimented with on a dress form to see how they behave.

While draping for apparel design may seem like a daunting and tedious approach to creating patterns, it’s actually one of the more creative parts of the fashion design process. Apparel designers can experiment with fabric, and decide where to place darts, tucks, and other design elements. Playing with the way fabric folds and hangs on the body is a fun way to create new fashion designs that you wouldn’t have thought of sitting in front of a sketchpad!

More Vintage Dress Lab Please

I don't know about you, but I can't get enough of these vintage patterns. The looks of the 60's, 70's & 80's just keep getting recycled in todays fashions. It's so easy to make wearable dresses today using the patterns for yesterday. I would have to say this is what makes our Vintage Dress Lab continue to be one of our most popular Fashion Lab Series Classes.

I went through the treasure trove of my vintage pattern collection today and picked out 4 fresh (so to speak) vintage patterns to be added to the upcoming Vintage Dress Lab that is happening on Tuesday nights in October. The dresses added to the line-up reflect the fall season a bit better, as well.

If you haven't already taken this class, fear not. If you've got some sewing experience under your belt (ie, you're comfortable on the sewing machine and you have some pattern reading experience) you can take this class easily. You may not complete four dresses in the 4-week course, but you'll have access to all four patterns and if you give it some extra time (open lab hours - which are free with this class!)four dresses are totally do-able.

If you have already taken this class, come take it again! Four new, never done before projects means that there is never a project repeat! No matter how many times you take this class, you'll always make new dresses and learn new skills. I promise!

The other really cool thing about this class you are forced to learn how to size patterns to fit your own body. Vintage patterns typically come in one size only. It's not like the patterns today that have multiple sizes in one envelope. So depending on the size of each of the patterns you choose to do in this class, part of what you will be learning is how to make adjustments to the patterns so they fit your body measurements. You'll see just how simple and un-intimidating this process really is.

Here is the link to all the details of the class.

Summer Camp, Summer Camp, Sum, Sum, Summer Camp

Our Fashion Lab Summer Camp is back for it's fourth summer in Hoboken. And while I am still getting back into the swing of teaching sewing to kids all day long, 5 days a week, we are having a blast so far!

I have two groups of amazing kids with me this week who have all dove into their sewing projects with so much excitement this week. It's hard to believe all have taken home at least one great project, along with some smaller projects in only 3 short days.

Here is Gabriella who finished her adorable (and reversible) shoulder strap tote. Look at the pride!

I have two of my youngest stitchers yet in my 12-2pm group. Both have picked up using the sewing machine like they were born to do it. It's hard to believe Isabel is going into 1st grade next year:

And Miss Cora is going to be in 2nd grade next year:

I will keep you updated with more blog postings, but in the mean time, here is the set of photos so far from this class:

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Recycled Sweater -> Hat & Mitten Set

This past Saturday, we hosted the hat & mitten set workshop at the studio. Everybody brought inan old sweater they don't wear anymore (or in Colleen's case, and old sweater that her co-worker doesn't wear anymore). We then turned these old, unwearable sweaters into a much more wearable winter hat & mitten set.

Here is Colleen's before:

 

(I guess it's not technically her before, as the photo was shot after she cut the sleeves off to use for her project...)

What then happened was really pretty simple:

First make a pattern. You are going to trace one hand on a piece of paper with the thumb at a 30-degree angle from the fingers. Draw a mitten shape around the outline of the hand, adding 1/2 inch. 

Next, cut out the pattern and pin it onto both layers of the sweater. Cut out the pattern to create two mitten shapes.

Now, with right sides facing, pin the mitten cutouts together, then with a sewing machine, sew them together, leaving a 1/4-seam allowance. Begin sewing at the cuff along the outside edge of the mitten, making sure not to stretch the fabric. For smooth curves, pick up the foot, and rotate the mitten as you sew.

Finally, to prevent fraying, sew around the mitten again, leaving a 1/8-inch seam allowance. Turn the mitten right-side out, and press. Repeat these steps for the second mitten.

Now for the hat, we did use a pattern, but it's a super simple one that I wound up finding online. The hat uses four panels that look like this:

 

Here are the directions I found on craftstylish.com.  I used these instructions to make my pattern and my first hat. 

"To determine the width of your panels, divide the head circumference by 5, then add 1 inch for seam allowance (1/2 inch each side). My head measures 22 inches around, so dividing it by 5 gave me 4.4, which I rounded up to 4-1/2. Adding 1 inch gives me 5-1/2 inches. Add 1 inch to your length measurement. Mine was 8-1/2 inches, so I have 9-1/2 inches for my total length."

 

But what I found is that depending on how much stretch you have in your felted sweater, you may not need all five panels. I have a pretty big melon and only used 4 panels of this size, sewn together.

 

So that said, you are going to put your first two panels together with rights sides facing. Sew from the bottom edge up to the point using a 1/2" seam allowance. Do the same with two more panels. Now put your doubled panels together with right sides facing and sew half of the rainbow together. At this point, try it on and determine if four will suffice or if you need another panel. If it's big enough to fit your noggin, continue sewing the rainbow. If you need the 5th panel, sew that to the series of four and finally sew up the remaining seams so you have what looks like a hat.

 

As you can see from Colleens photo, she decided to fold up the edge of the hat and it fit her perfectly. A couple of other students (sorry I don't have photos)ended up folding the extra edge in and stitching it down. If you decide to do this, be careful not to stretch as you sew or it looks pretty stretched out once you are done. You could even try hand sewing the edge under to prevent this from happening, we found.

Hoboken Guide @ Design Sponge

A fellow business owner here in town passed along a link to a Hoboken City Guide on the Design Sponge Blog. I am soooo honored to be a part of this piece, as I absolutely love Design Sponge!

"Welcome to Hoboken. A vibrant New Jersey town just a hop, skip and jump over the river from Manhattan. Hoboken was made famous as the birthplace of Frank Sinatra, the filming location of the Marlon Brando movie On The Waterfront and the music venue “Maxwell’s” where Bruce Springsteen filmed the video for “Glory Days.”

Hoboken is also the town of many firsts, including inventions like freeze-dried coffee, bubble wrap and ice cream, as well as the first organized baseball game and the first brewery. It boasts the most bars and restaurants in one square mile of its town’s boundaries, and the indie/designer/art scene is on its way up due to many artists and musicians living here. It is also home of the infamous Cake Boss from the Lifetime show."

And here is what they had to say about us, under the category Art, Craft Supplies & Galleries:

"M. Avery Designs — Also home of the Hoboken Handmade Collective. If you love fabric, this is the place to visit. They also host classes and socials and offer open studios for use of their sewing machines. All items in the store are handmade and gorgeous. 266, 7th Street (at the corner of Willow Ave.)"

Read more at Design*Sponge  

http://www.designspongeonline.com/2011/01/hoboken-city-guide.html#ixzz1AlrVWDHV

Adorable Kids Sewing Project

I am always looking for fun ways to teach kids to sew in our Fashion Lab Kids Hand Sewing & Crafting classes. Today I came across these super cute animal sewing cards on a blog written by a graphic designer in California and she made it beyond easy! She's got PDF's of all four of these adorable animal designs that you can print out onto sturdy paper and get the kids stitching lickety-split!

Guess what we'll be doing in class on Tuesday?!?

Teacher First, Small Business Owner Second.

Things have been a little hectic lately around the shop because we are trying to promote our summer camp program that begins on June 21st. It's starting to feel a little more urgent, as our camp was waaaay more full at this time of year last year. This is WAY stressful to someone that doesn't get a weekly pay check...

Obviously there are probably a lot factors are contributing to this. I am sure the economy is a huge part of it and people are feeling a little more strapped then they felt at this time last year. But what I am thinking (and hoping) it may be just that parents haven't yet started thinking about what is going to go on in their kids lives over the summer, as they just returned to school from spring break.

But in this frantic-ness of these last couple of weeks, promoting the heck out of our summer camp and trying to get the word out in every possible way, I was able to step back and reflect on the summer camp itself.

This little card helped me to remember that even though I am a business owner and one of my major goals has to be making money so I can stay in business. The other major and more important goal of my job is being the best teacher and educator I possibly can. I am able to teach kids my passion of sewing. I get paid to inspire and create and for that I am the luckiest girl on the planet.

I am good at what I do and kids LOVE coming and creating with me. This camp is going to fill itself, as it does every year and I am not going to stress about it anymore!

Summer Camp 2010

Summer Camp to include Ages 5-7 For Summer 2010

It's hard to believe that summer is just around the corner, but I guess the weather makes it a little easier to start thinking about that stuff.

As many of you already know, we have had our fashion lab summer camp for the last three summers, teaching kids age 8+ basic fashion design and sewing.  Due to the popularity of the Saturday morning crafting classes for ages 5-7, we have decided to include this age group in our summer camp for summer 2010.

We're pretty excited about this and thought you might be as well! Similar to the  Saturday morning classes, kids in the camp will learn *Beading *Hand Sewing *Cutting *Glueing *Needlepoint *Weaving & More AND there won't ever be any repeat projects from the Saturday morning classes. So you can be sure each week it's a new and exciting project.

Here are the details:
Camp begins Monday June 21st, 2010 and runs until Thursday July 29th, 2010.

There will be two different groups to choose from:
(Please note: The only things different between the two groups is the days of the week the classes meet.)

Group 1 Meets Mondays & Wednesdays
9:30-10:30am
First Three Weeks: June 21, 23, 28, 30, July 5, 7
Second Three Weeks: July 12, 14, 19, 21, 26 & 28

Group 2 Meets Tuesdays & Thursdays
9:30-10:30am
First Three Weeks: June 22, 24, 29, 31, July 6, 8 Cost is
Second Three Weeks: July 13, 15, 20, 22, 27 & 29

I am lucky enough to have pre-school teacher extraordinaire Kate Rockland helping out with the kids class this summer!

Kate Rockland's Bio - Kate has taught preschool in Hoboken for four years. She is a Hoboken resident and her favorite thing to sew is baby quilts! When Kate's not teaching or sewing, she's writing. Her novel "Falling is Like This" has just been released & is in book stores everywhere.

Cost is $110 for a three week session and $175 for the full 6 week session.

We are only taking a max of 8 kids per group and when we are full, we are FULL! So sign up early to ensure your childs spot.

More information here:
http://maverydesigns.com/summer_camp2010_age5-7.htm

Sweet Tees & Crumpets

Time to have a Girls Night Out "Tee" Party !

Get your ladies together for a night of T-shirt Deconstruction.

In this private party each guest starts with a plain used t-shirt and turns it into any of our fabulous deconstructed styles.

Our instructors will teach your group the basic design & sewing skills needed to play fashion designer for the day!

Get a group of six or more ladies together and everyone will design and stitch their very own custom deconstructed t-shirt and leave with it after the party. Don't worry, there is absolutely no sewing experience required!

You do the leg work, our staff will do the finishing touches to make sure your finished product is sturdy and professional looking when you take it home after this two-hour private party.


Check out a few of the photos, taken by photographer Adam Gallagher, of our first "Tee" Party. 

Or head to the website to find out all the details. 

Get a load of this - Salty sweet chocolate cake

Yesterdays project involved this great cookbook I checked out from the library. It's called Baked - New Frontiers in Baking and it's full of recipes from their Brooklyn Bakery.

Their signature creation, most requested recipe and most beloved cake at the bakery is the Sweet & Salty Cake and I couldn't wait to try it. Since today some friends and I are putting on a little informal baby shower for another friend I thought this would be the perfect excuse to try the cake and bring it over for the shower. And let me tell you I CANNOT wait to try this little cake!

Now, as you can imagine, their recipes are not simple. But I guess none of the recipes that I ever want to try, are simple. This one, actually really wasn't that bad, but I baked the cake layers a day ahead. I made the caramel and frosting yesterday and put the cake together. Since lately my apartment temperature hovers around 59 degrees, it was the perfect temperature to make a perfect buttercream and assembling the cake was a snap!

Here is the list of ingredient for the three components of this cake:

Classic Chocolate Cake Layers:
3/4 Cup dark unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/4 cups hot water
2/3 cup sour cream
2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup vegetable shortening
1 1/2 cups granulated white sugar
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar (which I just realized I forgot to put in, uh oh)
3 large eggs at room temperature
1 tablespoon pure vanilla

For the salted caramel
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon fleur de sel
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1/4 cup sour cream

For the Whipped Caramel Ganache Frosting
1 Pound Dark Chocolate, chopped
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
2 cups (four sticks) unsalted butter, soft but cool, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

And you need roughly 5 teaspoons of fleur de sel (sea salt), for the layers of the cake and for the garnish.

Now to make the cake, pre-heat the over to 325 degrees (thank god, this totally warmed up my apartment on this frigid weekend!) butter/oil three 8" round cake pans, cut out parchment paper rounds that fit in the bottom of the cake pans and oil them, as well.

To make the cake batter combine the cocoa powder, hot water and sour cream and set aside to cool.

Add the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt together into a medium bowl and set aside. (I will be honest, I amost never do this for cake recipes. I end up just adding all these dry ingredients to my wet ingredients at the end. I am a big fan of not dirtying as many bowls as most recipes suggest and most of the time, the recipe comes out just fine.)

Beat the butter and shortening in the kitchenaid with the paddle attachment for about 5 minutes. Add the sugars and beat until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at at time and beat between each addition. Add the vanilla and beat a little more. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and beat for another 30 seconds.

Add your dry ingredients, alternating with your cocoa mixture. Divide the batter between all three cake pans and bake for about 40 minutes, until you can stick a fork in the middle of the cakes and the prongs come out clean.

Make the salted caramel by adding the cream and the sea salt. Heat until the salt is all dissolved.

Add 1/4 cup of water, the corn syrup and the granulated sugar to a different saucepan. Heat on high until the mixture reads 350 degrees (6-8 minutes). Remove from heat and let cool. Add the cream mixture to the sugar mixture and let it cool. Put it in an airtight container and store in refrig until you are ready to assemble cake.

Making the caramel ganache frosting start out the same way as above.

Make the salted caramel by adding the cream and the sea salt. Heat until the salt is all dissolved.

Add 1/4 cup of water, the corn syrup and the granulated sugar to a different saucepan. Heat on high until the mixture reads 350 degrees (6-8 minutes). Pour the mixture over the dark chocolate in another heat-proof bowl. Let it sit for a minute until it starts to melt the chocolate.
Mix up this mixture until all the chocolate is completely melted. Let it cool and transfer to your mixer bowl. Beat this chocolate on low until it's completely cool.
Increase the speed to med-high and start adding the butter in small pieces until all is completely incorporated . Beat on high until the mixture is fluffy.

Assemble the cake

Place the first layer of the cake on a serving platter, add 1/3 of the salted caramel and spread it out. Add 1/4 of the ganache frosting and spread it out. Sprinkle some sea salt over this layer and add the second layer of cake. Add the caramel, frosting and sea salt in the same way. Add the third layer of cake and caramel. Crumb coat the cake with the ganache and put in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes. Frost the cake with the rest of the frosting and garnish with the remaining sea salt.

Phew - done - Finally!

I will let you know how it tastes after we sample it at the shower dinner tonight.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone