Crafty Manolo

If you love to sew and you love vintage, chances are you already know Gertie’s New Blog for Better Sewing.

It began as a Julie/Juliaesque project wherein Gretchen Hirsch (aka Gertie) worked her way through all the patterns in Vogue’s New Book for Better Sewing, published in the 1950’s. Fourteen fabulous vintage outfits later, well, Gertie kept on going. she’s still blogging away about sewing vintage style clothes, and all the issues that go with them. She teaches online courses, and appears on the PBS show It’s Sew Easy.

I guess all that was left to form a complete media empire was to write a book. And that, my friends, is precisely what Gertie has done. Gertie’s New Book for Better Sewing features twenty-five vintage-inspired patterns (in ten different sizes, no less!) conveniently located in an envelope attached to the book, instructions for sewing and fitting all the garments (including tips for sizing vintage patterns up and down to fit your body), advice on choosing the right fabrics and sources to get them from, all written in the same breezy style as her blog. The tattooed, bespectacled Gertie herself models all the clothes with aplomb and fabulosity… though I think it might have been useful to have at least a couple looks modeled by someone else instead or in addition to Gertie, just to show how they would look on other body types.

Still, that’s a minor quibble. If you love vintage clothes, if you love Gertie’s teaching style, if you’ve got a stack of old patterns you’d love to use if only you knew how to size them to your body, then this is the book for you.

Best of all, Amazon has it for the bargain basement price of just $22.88 (list price $35.00) and it qualifies for free Super Saving shipping, too.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 24th, 2012 at 11:01 am by Twistie and is filed under Books, Craft Artists, Free Shipping, Media, Sales, Sewing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.