In April, the Guild was super fortunate to have world renowned designer and sewist, Kathryn Brenne! For the past twenty years, Kathryn has been bringing her consummate knowledge, teaching skills and passion for creating to the Academy of fine Sewing & Design-which she founded in 2000. A graduate of Ryerson University’s Fashion Design program, she is a top selling Vogue Patterns designer, and one of the industry’s most published authors of sewing techniques.

For close to an hour, Kathryn entranced us all as she spoke warmly and knowledgably about the world of fashion, exquisite detailing and the lost art of precision and craftsmanship in Couture sewing. She described her work as a contributing editor to Vogue Patterns and Sew Today. Kathryn’s Vogue designs are still top sellers. When she sewed garments for their models, she rarely had to alter or refit as she did so much preparation, thread tracing and muslin work prior to sending the garment, it fit flawlessly.

During her talk, Kathryn showed many of her garments. She described the how she produced the exquisite details in linen, silk organza, wool etc. Much of her work is done by hand, using timeless couture techniques while adding her twist and flare. Her fabrics ranged from high end to mundane. Kathryn knows how to shop the ‘wall’ at Fabricland and incorporate it into fabric creations from the best textile shops from around the world.

These days, Kathryn Brenne can be found giving lessons at her home studio via her website finesewing.com . She also contributes to emmaonesock.com. where you can find her many online sewing tutorials.

Overall, members were inspired and dazzled by what Kathryn Brenne showed us and told us about her work, possibilities, and other sewing and clothing design  related matters. Thank you so much, Kathryn, for inviting us into you studio and giving us an awe inspiring talk!

Sew & Tell

Pre-empted in March by the Guild Meeting being turned into a paper fitting class with Pamela Leggett, Sew & Tell was back in April. With most members being occupied with the various overlapping Guild challenges going on, like the Sewing Partners Challenge previously documented, only two members had items in Christine and Charlene. However, as usual, we got interesting and well designed and made garments and items. Click on photos to enlarge.

Other Challenges

There were numerous other garments and items sewn that were shown. However, given these Guild challenges spanned several months, individual posts dedicated to them will be made to show all the results in one post rather than spread out over several posts.