Susan Khaljie

This past Saturday I attended a workshop sponsored by the Maryland Chapter of the American Sewing Guild (ASG). It was a wonderful day from start to finish. Good location, good food and a fantastic instructor. I also got to meet a Joyce in NC who comments on my blog and Alisa, both currently blogless. I met Alisa on the bus trip to New York last year. As always with sewists it’s like meeting long lost sisters! You start talking and it’s as if you’ve known each other forever.

Susan was the host of “Sew Much More” on HGTV; she’s an author and a regular contributor to Threads magazine. She’s also a wonderful and enthusiastic instructor. Susan brought loads of her garments (several have been featured in Threads) for us to inspect (and believe me we did!) and led us through several couture techniques. The class description read:

“You’ll learn how and where to apply the couture techniques that will lift
the quality of your garments from ordinary to extraordinary. You’ll master
the following: a range of basic hand-sewing stitches,a hand-picked zipper,
ultra-thin spaghetti straps, a beautifully controlled narrow machine hem,
perfect angled seams, covered snaps that are attached with a buttonhole
stitch, thread chains and thread bars, seaming lace invisibly and faggoting.”

Several times during the course of the day one of my classmates would exclaim, “That alone was worth the price of the class”. For me it was the covered snaps and spaghetti straps. Recently, I’ve been thinking about upgrading my sewing skills and these were two items on the list. It’s amazing how easy they both were. The snaps are a bit fiddly, but I’m hoping I’ll improve over time.

The only thing I would have changed would have been to bring a second zipper even though the class list only called for one. We did two hand picked zippers: a centered and a lapped zipper application. This meant we had to unpick the centered zipper to do the lapped one. When I finish here, I’m going to do another centered one.

After I got home, I immediately assembled a note book with my class samples and notes. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy hand sewing. Anyone else remember being a Brownie and sewing a sampler of hand stitches? I have no idea what happened to mine, but I going to recreate one beginning with the stitches I became reacquainted with Saturday.

It was a wonderful day. It was really a day to remember and one of the reasons I joined ASG: exposure and the chance to take classes from nationally known teachers. It was also very reasonably priced. I can’t wait to do it again!

Here are some pics:
Susan and me:



Joyce and Blondell (the workshop organizer:



Susan's Skinny Spaghetti Straps:




My faggotting sample:



My covered snaps:



TTYL,

Melodye