During the artist’s so-called Berkeley years, from 1953-1966, American painter Richard Diebenkorn captured the fresh, invigorating air of California with his own inimitable brand of intuitive brushstrokes and playfully vibrant colour schemes. Throughout these years the oceanic blue of Blue Bonnet Linen was a recurring feature in his art, whether depicting ocean views seen from…
FS Colour Series: Blue Bonnet Inspired by Richard Diebenkorn’s Berkeley Blue
I’ve been wanting to experiment with hand-painted fabric for a while now, and once I decided to try it out, the next step was finding the perfect base pattern. Enter: the Bruna Shirt. I tried out this pattern collection a couple years ago and was immediately impressed. It’s simple, yet thoughtful details make the finished…
Ease is the difference between your body measurements and the finished garment measurements. It’s calculated using a simple formula: Finished garment measurement — Body measurement = Ease Ease plays a crucial role in how clothes fit, feel, and function. It determines whether a garment feels comfortable and moves naturally with the body, or feels too…
Could you tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into sewing? Hi! I’m Shreya, and I’m based in Austin, Texas with my husband and two enormous cats, Juno and Plato. My background is in economics/consulting, and I now work in people strategy and development. I’ve always loved working with my hands! Growing up,…
Renowned Australian Aboriginal artist Emily Kam Kngwarray (1910-1996) was one of the 20th century’s most remarkable artists, and a current large-scale retrospective at London’s Tate Modern pays homage to the depth and breadth of her legacy. She worked with predominantly with batik, and later acrylic painting on canvas, producing fantastically intricate and brilliantly colourful marks…
Grading is the process of creating different sizes from a single base pattern or block. It doesn’t alter the design itself but instead scales the base pattern up or down to accommodate a range of body sizes, such as going from a size XXS to a size 4XL. This allows a single design to fit…
In the eerily quiet world of Andrew Wyeth, warm, rustic shades of brown like Chocolate Linen play a pivotal role, colouring broken tree stumps, shadowy interiors, or mounds of dry, crumbling earth. His barren, haunting paintings captured the raw and honest simplicity of his home town in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and his summer home in…
At 19 years-old, Mindy Pelz found herself relentlessly exhausted. Undeterred after an initial diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome that could take years to recover from with no known cure, her mother brought her for a second opinion with a holistic doctor. Under the doctor’s guidance, Pelz was able to fast herself out of fatigue’s spell….
A few years ago I stumbled upon a jacket by the company Flainer. A floral print quilted jacket, on a black background. I’ve been dreaming of this jacket for a while. When the Fabrics-Store created a glorious line of Cotton Poplin, in a print that exudes still life floral paintings à la Jan Davidsz de…
After making the Capucine bathrobe, I was really excited to make the Capucine pajamas because I knew they were going to be excellent in both quality and feel. I also knew this project was going to work my brain a little harder to achieve the similar thorough details and steps that I worked on with…
Tell us a bit about yourself. I’m Isabelle, I’m French, half Korean through my mom, and I currently live in France. As a student, I lived in the US for a year, in China for a year, and I worked in Berlin, Germany for three years before coming back to Paris right before Covid. What’s…
Could you tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into sewing? I am a mother to two boys (5 & 3) with a baby girl on the way (August 2025). I studied fashion in college, and earned a bachelors degree in fashion merchandising and design. I later learned pattern making and grading in much more detail…
I had recently been part of a pattern tester team for a beautiful barn jacket that a designer friend of mine put out. I live in Florida, and we only see truly cold temps every few years, so my opportunity for wearing more than a light jacket paired with a sweater doesn’t happen often. At…
Fieldman was born from a desire to reclaim material, story, and possibility. The name itself carries weight: it honors my great-grandfather, who was forced to pick cotton, and now, generations later, I use that same fiber to build something entirely my own. Fieldman is both tribute and transformation—a love letter to those who came before…
If you’ve already read Part 1 of this tutorial, you will hopefully have a good understanding of when blending between sizes on a sewing pattern can come in handy. Let’s get into how to actually do it. In this Part 2, I will walk you through the basic process using a few different examples. I’ll…
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