Wednesday 27 January 2016

Emery Class at Badger & Earl

For the past two Saturdays I've been helping two lovely ladies - Julia and Michaela - to sew the Emery Dress as part of a dressmaking class. The class was held at Badger & Earl in Chiswick (the finest sewing cafe in west London!) and it was an absolute pleasure from beginning to end. The whole class was 10 hours in total, spread over two weeks, so we spent the first week cutting out the pattern and fabric and constructing the basic shell of the dress. We were then able to dedicate the second week to trickier areas such as inserting zips, setting in sleeves and adding the bodice lining. 


Both students had some prior experience of dressmaking and just needed extra guidance with specific techniques, which made things a lot easier. As did the awesomeness of the pattern, in particular the well drafted sleeves and excellent instructions. The pockets were fab too, the method for attaching them was one I'd never used before and I'm now a convert!  Neither dress was hemmed as one had to be  shortened and the other needed trying on with proper shoes before deciding on the final length. But still, I think cutting the dresses out from scratch and sewing them up in just two sessions was pretty amazing. 

That zip is well and truly invisible!


It was such a delight to help Julia and Michaela create such beautiful dresses - needless to say I felt VERY proud!

Proud!
Badger & Earl is a lovely place to learn a new skill, classes are small and friendly and the tea and cake is exemplary! They've just signed up two new sewing tutors (Margaret and Krystel) and are busy putting together ideas for additional dressmaking and fitting classes. This will hopefully include a trouser fitting class, which I think will be a popular one. If you have any suggestions for future classes, do let me know in the comments and I'll happily pass them on. 

Thanks to Julia for kindly forwarding the above photos for me to use - guess who forgot her camera?! x

5 comments:

  1. What a lovely dress! I wasn't interested in it when I saw the line drawings, but, now that I've seen photos of it on actual people... I'd promised myself to not buy any more pattern until after winter is done. This convinced me to do otherwise.

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  2. Hi Jane. What a great class this must have been. How lucky the students to have such accessible help. You asked for areas to cover in future classes and for me it would be help in working with plaids! I'm currently working on a shirt for my other half and I'm scared to even cut the fabric let alone get to grips with packets! Help.

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  3. That should, obviously, have read plackets! Oops.

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  4. Thanks for the kind review of the pattern! You clearly did a great job with these lovely ladies and I can attest to how much work it is to teach the entire Emery in two sessions! Very well done indeed! And I'm glad you like my pockets too! :)

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  5. Such gorgeous dresses! Thy both turned out so well. And obviously your expert coaching went well, Jane. It is indeed a nice pattern for a basic dress and I, too, may get one this year.

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