Sew Berkeley!

Fashion fabrics at Stonemountain and Daughter in Berkeley, CA.

I once lived in Berkeley for more than ten years.  This was a hectic but inspiring period of my life. I became a new mom not to just four little kids but to my Bernina and first serger sewing machines. With quality new machines, my love for sewing blossomed.  I stitched weekly through each pregnancy and in between breastfeeding.  My need to hone my skills eventually lead to my attending a local fashion design school...an education that solidified my love for the art of fashion.

With new sewing tools, meant getting new supplies.  I conveniently lived stroller distance to Stonemountain and Daughter, which was a humble two-story shop where the owner (father) did most of the purchasing while the daughter ran the shop. He also used to pick up a lot of bolt-ends from design rooms in Los Angeles. It's changed a bit, and it's noticeable more "daughter" than "father," and there's almost a whole room dedicated to quilting fabric, which was an add-on when they took over the former car repair shop next door.  It was also at this store where one of the sales ladies loaned me a small collection of vintage fashion books, and opened my eyes to the history of clothing construction.  Discovering Lacis came after this introduction, but it was this kind of generosity that added fuel to my insatiable hunger for textiles and clothing construction.

My local Meetup group had a "field trip" this past weekend to Berkeley which included 13 sewists from around the SF Bay Area. Although half the group were new, we instantly connected at the doors of Stonemountain and Daughter. Many had never ventured into fabric shopping in Berkeley.

The owner of Stonemountain, Suzanne just marked down many fabric bolts...all at 50% off.  The pickings were ripe that day. Everything I bought was on sale, including some interfacing.  I spent $158 total, which included tax and a $5.00 Vogue pattern. I walked out with some amazing pieces. The most expensive was $11 a yard of 100% wool, and the cheapest was $3.75 fuschia-colored polyester chiffon. I thought I showed some self-restraint. Over lunch, we did a quick tally of how much everyone spent, and concluded that amongst the 13 of us, our combined total was close to $1,500. Not everyone in our group was an experienced sewer so their planned projects were limited. But everyone was inspired to buy something.

Good selection of ethnic prints.

Sample of their in-store creations from some very unique pattern makers. 

They carry a good range of independent pattern companies. 

Large fat quarter selection.

Almost a whole room devoted to quilting textiles and supplies. 

Stonemountain and Daughter has a large button selection that
rivals the upscale downtown SF store across the bridge.  

Our second stop after lunch at a local Ethiopian restaurant was Lacis. This is one of those stores that everyone needs to stop by at least once.  My first experience here was a private showing of antique lace and clothing personally chaperoned by co-owner Kaethe Kliot.  Mrs. Kliot passed away in 2002, followed by her husband Jules in 2012.  The store's new curator is Erin Algeo who worked at Lacis with Jules up until his untimely passing in 2012. Erin is who I speak to when I need any detailed help. My last trip to Lacis, she helped me with corset supplies, and this weekend, she gave me great suggestions for collecting supplies to start my tambour embroidery practice.

I don't have an elderly relative with mad hand-stitching skills to learn from. Lacis is essentially my surrogate. I consider myself lucky to even have a place like this and I would mourn the day, should this gem disappear.  Dreamed up because of a love for lace making and preservation, this museum is one of Berkeley's greatest treasures and important legacy for handcrafters worldwide. Stepping into Lacis is a history lesson for all and a place to learn to be a part of preserving an art that cannot be lost as long as we continue to stitch and adorn by hand.

Lacis has expanded from it's one room location, to now a sprawling two space building including an ample bookstore with a myriad of handcrafting book topics. They have a bustling online business now with a separate warehouse. There's always something on exhibit and the sales attendants are extremely helpful. See the resource links at the bottom of the blog for more information. Lacis has the best selection of hand sewing needles that I have seen.  

Some of the ladies in the group picked up vintage patterns, a miniature crochet hook for beading, and a lovely piece of vintage fabric. But all of us enjoyed looking at the lace making tools and vintage fabric and trimming in the adjacent "wedding" room.  I call it that, because they house everything a bride would need to recreate a beautiful gown. But it's also their museum.  I remember purchasing a vintage linen handkerchief trimmed with handmade lace and blue silk ribbon for my sister-in-law's wedding from here. It fulfilled the "something old and something blue" requirement. For a brief moment before giving my sister-in-law her gift, I thought about making the gift a loan so it could be "something borrowed" too.  But of course, I didn't.

Antique lace collection.
Photo courtesy of Ali Boncha.

Millinery supplies at Lacis.
Photo courtesy of Ali Boncha.

Vintage Patterns
Photo courtesy of Ali Boncha.

Sample vintage patterns.
Photo courtesy of Ali Boncha.

The wedding room at Lacis.
Photo courtesy of Ali Boncha.

Our final destination for the day was a quick stop to Discount Fabrics just down the road from Lacis on Ashby Avenue.  We walked in surprised to discover that everything in the store was marked down an additional 20% except for lace. Wouldn't you know it? It was the lace that I really wanted.

Discount Fabrics is a huge warehouse located in the former Straw Into Gold location.  All the fabric comes from long rolls rather than bolts. It's really the more professional way to store fabric without adding a folded crease like most fabric bolts. The rolls are stacked, standing up in barrels, and beautifully hung.  Getting through the stacked bolts require some digging and elbow grease. I was so tired from shopping that I barely had the energy to push my cart around the store, but I had some fumes leftover to find a couple pieces of lace and funky black and white cow printed vinyl. The vinyl's black print is a synthetic velvet, and the white pleather reminded me something Nancy Sinatra might wear while singing "These Boots are Made for Walkin."

Discount Fabrics is a good supplier for home furnishing materials, sequined fabric, and trimming. There's ample fashion fabrics at great prices. Denim was on sale that day for less than five dollars a yard. Prices are better very reasonable and worth a trip. Discount Fabrics reminds me a lot of the stores in LA's fabric district. I grew up in LA, and spent many hours combing through these streets in high school purchasing costume materials for my dance group. Look for a future blog on LA's fabric mart probably late Winter 2014.

Discount Fabrics also has stores in San Francisco, including their main location South of Market on 11th Street. I plan on checking out the SF store one day soon too.

My burnt velvet pleather cow piece.  This is planned for another
version of the Amy Butler bag. 

We ended our long day with coffee at Cafe Trieste, and fond goodbyes from fellow sewists. By the time we got to coffee, we had lost 40 percent of our original sewists.  The die-hard group were the gals from the South Bay. Yah!

Enjoy the rest of the pictures and resource links below and happy sewing!

RESOURCES

There were a couple of places that got mentioned for fabric shopping outside (but near) Berkeley that you might be interested in if you spend more than a day in the East Bay. One is a new store called Urban Burp which sells vintage fabric and accessories.  They also have an online store. This is definitely on my list for stores to visit. The second is operated by former employees of the now closed Poppy Fabrics. For old residents of Oakland and Berkeley, Poppy Fabrics was a regular stop for sewists and carried a good selection of quilting and home decor fabrics. The store site remains empty, but its replacement is Piedmont Fabrics down the hill.

For you weavers and yarn enthusiasts, Straw Into Gold has moved to Richmond after operating at the now Discount Fabrics location for 30 years. Sadly, they are only a wholesale, online store now.  See link below.

Stonemountain and Daughter: http://www.stonemountainfabric.com/
Lacis: http://www.lacis.com/
Great blog with more pictures of Lacis at Toni's Vintage Trips: Link Here
Discount Fabrics: http://www.discountfabrics-sf.com/
Urban Burp: http://www.urbanburp.com/
Piedmont Fabrics: http://piedmontfabrics.com/
Straw Into Gold: http://www.straw.com/sig/sigmenu1.html

Ponte knit, wool tweed stretch fabric (multi-colored), and snake skin polyester fabrics
from Stonemountain and Daughter. 

A very heavy burnt orange two-way stretch knit that can be used for unlined jackets,
and anything bottom weight. The bottom gun-metal grey/blue fabric is 100% tropical
stretch wool. I bought the last three yards at $11 a yard. 

Purple and black lace from Discount Fabrics. The purple lace was $6.80 a yard.
The black lace was about $7 a yard.

Wool fabric on left, and the fuchsia chiffon on right. Both from
Stonemountain and Daughter.

I Love My Body

Australian book cover from Guardian Faber Publishers.
Click publisher link to take you directly to their site.

There's a new book out written by a former Australian Vogue editor Kirstie Clements about the world of modeling. In a nutshell, it writes about how runway models torture their bodies to stay slim.  The book is called The Vogue Factor, and it's currently available on Amazon. I think more of these kinds of books need to be published and given ample publicity to help debunk the so-called glamor-obsessed commercial fashion industry. I love beautiful things, and fashion is one of those beautiful things, but I am reminded every time I see a fashion cover or a runway model this: "How high is the cost?"

About three or four years ago, I cancelled all my fashion magazine subscriptions. It wasn't a protest against emaciated cover models, but because 70% or more of the magazines were and are about advertising. I know it is their bread and butter, but advertising can be an evil business because behind those perfume ads, it's all about the money for every one. Watch Mad Men to see a fictional (but how fictional really?) portrayal of the corruptibility of American media.

I posted on my Google+ community today about teaching our daughters (and even sons) how to sew because it can empower them to appreciate their bodies by customizing their clothes to look and feel good on them. Yes...let the high-fashion designers continue to inspire us with their creativity but bring that inspiration closer to home...to our very own cutting tables. People are taking charge of their food by growing it themselves, why not as much of our own wearables and have some creative fun at the same time?

Tips On Making Our Bodies Look Good All The Time

We're all shaped different.  Some of us are short, tall, apples, pears, triangles, and squares. But whatever shape we think we are or are not, I've found some basic rules when it comes to fashion that really applies to everyone.  Everyone? Yup, everyone.

Good fit is the key.  
Don't buy clothes that fit us poorly. Get the most comfortable piece, and then get it tailored or altered to fit. If you're sewing the garment, then, there's no problem at all. Measure the largest part of your body. (For me, it's my waist. I check patterns to make sure they fit my waist first, and the rest I can take in, make shorter or longer.) Oh, by-the-way, big clothes just makes us look bigger and tight clothes makes us look a little bloated in the wrong places.

For women: wear a well-fitted bra.
I don't wear well-fitted bras all the time. I like my girls to be loose and free the majority of the time. But when I'm wearing a nice outfit or have a date with my husband, I will put on a bra with good support. A good bra makes EVERY outfit drape better, and can make us look five to ten pounds lighter. I own two good bras: a nude strapless, and a regular nude underwire.

Cap sleeves can make a chubby arm look thinner.
I learned this ages ago. I didn't like the tops of my arms as much when I was younger, but I'm mostly used to them now. I think it's a little too fleshy looking in general. Adding cap sleeves or any sleeve will create a more slender looking arm. Make sure there's no pinching in the arm holes, then we're back to item number one on this post (see above).

V-Necks make everyone tall and thinner.
I tend to purchase a lot of v-necked pieces because I know that the shape elongates my neck. If you don't believe me, try on a few things with different neck shapes and take a picture of yourself. Wear a good bra too!

The right hem line will make your legs look great.
High heels also makes our legs look great, but I hate wearing them. Next best thing is to make sure that the hems of your blouses, skirts, and dresses are proportional to your body. I like my blouse to fit right above my hips (if I am not tucking them in), and my skirt or dress lengths to hit an inch or two above the knee. Yes, there will be times when fashion will dictate our hemlines, but I'm speaking about the "classic" hem line. Oh, but a little drop-waisted top or dress can hide the post baby-bulge too.

A-line skirts are good for our bodies.
Hands down...it really doesn't matter what size you are. This is just a great cut. Not sure what an A-line skirt is? Do a search on Google, and check out the images. Feeling bloated? Ate too much over the holidays? Wear an A-line skirt and all your worries will fizzle away. This guideline extends to dresses too. Just a quick sentence about hosiery, if you ladies still wear pantyhose, nude is the best color.

Dresses and skirts look better than pants.
This has nothing to do with women's liberation. Skirts and dresses just hide more. So if you want to look a few pounds lighter at your next event skip the pants. If you must wear pants, then wear pants that have no pleats...kind of a no brainer...I'm just say'n.

Clothes with darts can be our best friend.
I hate sewing darts. But they make my girls look better, my back and hips more (or less) shapely. Look at quality, tailored clothing...those pieces are meticulous about darts. This is really a repeat of item number one.

Monochrome dressing makes us look taller and thinner.
If you wear a floral skirt with a solid blouse, you might look heavier on the bottom, unless of course it's intentional. Dressing non-monochrome can help us in the reverse as well. Small busted and wide hips? Floral top and a dark solid skirt will balance your proportions. I wear a lot of black...just a city thing I think. But I'm starting to get a lot more colorful these days, especially when I care more about looking "fun" than looking thinner. It's just a basic rule of thumb when it comes to dressing in one color.  I might add that, it doesn't have to be exactly the same shade, various shades of the same color can have similar effects. I don't even want to justify another item by reminding folks that the darker the color, the thinner you look...that's just given right?

Cuffed pants stunt our growth.
We don't need to eat badly for this to happen, we can wear cuffed pants, and it will happen instantly.  I will admit that I love the look, but in reality, the cuffs cut us right at the ankles. I am not tall enough to carry it, and "good-for-you" if you are five-feet-ten-inches or taller...in that case, please milk those cuffed pants to death. On the flip side, pants with a little flare like bootlegged jeans can make our hips look smaller. Straight legged pants are always more pleasing than tight fitted pencil pants. I don't need to write about leggings right or worse, jeggings.

Just a little final tidbit about the shoes.
Yeah, if you wear similar color shoes with your pants, you can get your legs a bit longer (granted that you're not wearing cuffed pants), but who really does that these days?

With all these points written and committed onto the WWW, I want to now recant everything. At the end of the day, none of these things really, really matter. But just in case there's a day where it might, I hope the information was useful.

Sewing Room Update: Better Organization

Practice muslins and tag board patterns hanging on the back of the door.

I love to sew but like many people, even the most obsessed, finding time in a busy schedule is really challenging.  Last December, I started a sewing Meetup group that has now almost 100 members in my local area.  We've had three sewing events, and a couple of outings. Each event included more new members, and the momentum seems to be there. But every month or so, I get members who leave the group for the same reason: no time.

I sew because it clears my brain. This has been the best benefit for me mentally.  It's like a different exercise for the brain, and affords me to use my creativity. But with a busy schedule, I've had to put a few rules into place.  This is what I've done so far to keep me productive:

Organize! Organize! Organize!

These are my favorite shelves that house all my sewing and some knitting gear.  I use little clear plastic bins to house my notions.  My ironing space is directly underneath.

I put all my machines on the same table so there's easy access to sewing.  All the machines are plugged in and ready to go. Not everything on the desk is mine. Some of my husband's paperwork and files are still there.  It's the least I could do since I took over his space.

Last Summer, I took over my husbands space out in the work room.  He really wasn't using it any way, and I needed it more than he did.  I will admit that most people do not have this kind of spare real estate.  I  didn't for years until we moved here, and if and when we move again, my space availability might change.  But I'm enjoying it while I can.

I can't work in clutter.  I know everyone's different.  Every couple of months or so, I do a more thorough cleaning, and regroup some of my supplies, and put things back where they belong so I can find them again. Doing this regularly has really saved me tons of actual sewing time.  I throw away fabric cuttings, try to organize the tables to create more work space, and return some of the tools back to their dedicated baskets. When my cutting tables are cluttered, I don't want to sew or start on a new project.  It is as simple as that.  I get discouraged just looking at a table piled high with patterns and the like.

Everything Within Arms Reach.

I have a lot of little trays and baskets scattered around my sewing room.  One near my cutting table, a portable basket I can move from table to table with my most frequently used tools, another one right by my sewing machine, and a toolbox that is filled with anything I need for travel or school projects.  It seems excessive, but it's not really.  Instead of storing all my "extra" or duplicate supplies like tailor's chalk, scissors, threads, needles, and other tools, I put them in different baskets so they are always handy.  I hate having to get up and walk across the room to pick up things I need.  Face it, sewists tend to have too many gadgets or multiples of the things we love.  Why keep them all wrapped up in its original packaging?  Break everything out and scatter them around your work space to make everything more efficient.

Basket at the sewing machine table.

Tray for the tall cutting table.

Additional tray for drafting and cutting at the work desk.

I've had this Art Bin for 20 years and it still stores my drafting
supplies.

Same Art Bin opened with three trays 

 Taming My Stash...

This is challenging.  I avoid frequent visits to the fabric store.  I give myself budgets, and purchase things that I plan on using within the same season, or at least within the same year. If I'm holding something I like, and I say to myself, "This might be great for a top for my daughter," I put the thing down and move on.  Having self control over fabrics, especially when they are on sale is a problem.  Having too much fabric that I'm not using is also a problem.  Fifteen years ago, during one of my big moves, I cleared out several boxes of fabric that I was no longer using. I put aside two boxes of things I really loved and couldn't part with.  The reality of it is, I only really cared about ten percent of my stash.  I like to spend a little more money on better fabric these days so I make sure I use them, and I limit how much I buy.  I can honestly say that I love every piece that I've picked up except for one: a synthetic jersey piece that I got fairly cheap to try my hand at making a bathing suit. Okay...I'm also not going to beat myself up over bad fabric decisions either.

I just cleared out this shelf for fabric.  It's filled with all my current pieces and my patterns in a basket at the bottom.  There's still room for more, but I'm going to try to use up every thing in here this year.

Another shelf filled with extra fabric that I have collected.  This is my main stash.

These are the only "floor" storage bins.  I have a plastic bucket filled with my old stash, but it's only about 1/3 full now, a couple of bolts of fabric, and the white baskets on the right house all my yarn for knitting.  I try to limit my yarn stash too.

I have a couple of wire racks attached to my ironing board, a perfect place to store my rolled paper,  and light fabric rolls.

Storing Patterns

I don't have a great system, but it works.  I have a small chest of drawers that I store already cut up patterns, patterns waiting to be used, or patterns that I want to re-use again soon.  Eventually, I will clean out all the drawers so I can keep other sewing supplies in there.  Right now, the other drawers just house paper, and some fabric.

Keeping My Scraps Almost Tidy.

As I sew and collect scraps for testing, and other little things, I throw them in a designated basket that's easy for me to rummage through, re-organize and re-use.  This was one of those easy "ah-ha" moments in my sewing room.  Very useful. 

My New Sewing Room

I have this spare room in the garage that's not a great space to use as an office.  It's cold and the floors are concrete.  But it's sunny, and there is a slow-working heater that eventually gets the room to a decent temperature.  My husband had dibs on the space, but he's only in there to do paperwork about twice a year.  It's now my sewing room.

Sewing is one of those hobbies that require a lot of work and storage space.  Without it, I lose things, and most importantly, I get a little discouraged about sewing in general.  So for the first time in 20-plus years, I've got some space to be my creative self.

It's a sewing-space-in-progress.  I'm still shifting things around, organizing every few weeks to make room for more things, and reorganize existing projects.  I'm trying really hard not to build up a ridiculous amount of fabric and notion stash.  I used to have ten boxes of fabric that I didn't know what to do with.  Never again.  I'm trying to use everything I have, and then some.

A great Craigslist find was my padded cutting table.  I have a  cutting mat on top right now.  This table is really unstable, so its held up one end by another cabinet and a bunch of books, but it was $40, the right height, and doubles as an ironing table.

This is a second-hand Horn sewing table that is actually too big for the sewing room.  It happens to fit my old Bernina 1130 perfectly, and is the same cabinet that I gave to my sister 20 years ago.  I've missed it, and one day I found this on Craigslist.  It was a great buy!

I do most of my sewing on my single stitch Juki...my absolutely favorite machine of all time.  I never thought I would love any machine more than my Bernina, but here it is!  It's fast and reliable.  I wish it could do zig zag, then my sewing life would be complete.

To the left of my Juki is my ironing station.  The shelves are actually a lot neater since I took this picture.  I'm planning on upgrading to a professional iron.  But I just don't have the time to hang a chain from the ceiling for the water tank.  I'm okay for now.  I'm not doing much heavy ironing anyway.  

My room from another angle.  You can see that it's a decent size, but of course, I wish it were bigger. I converted my old office shelf into a fabric storage unit.  I only use the top shelves to store things.  I have paper and other supplies in the drawers below.  I have more fabric stored in another plastic bin under the cutting table.  That's the bulk of my stash, and I want to keep it that way.