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A little about me:

I currently work full time as a lab technician in a plant pathology lab and I live in Washington state with my amazing husband, Jack, and two dogs, Flynn and Bailey. Some of my other interests besides sewing are weight training, fishing, camping, sketching, and riding horses!

Now here’s the story about how Adopt Your Clothes got started:

I’ve been sewing since I was young, but didn’t really fall in love with it until my senior year of high school. Back then, I would scrounge through my mom’s fabric piles and pattern collection and try to make things I thought looked fun. Sometimes I would even get the chance to go to the craft store and flip through those huge pattern books and pick out a brand new pattern and fabric.

Through this process my sewing improved like crazy, but for some reason I never actually wore what I made. There was always something just not-quite-right, sometimes the fit, or the fabric, or the style. And I could never find a pattern that looked just like the finished garment I imagined.

So two years ago I decided to learn to make and sew my own clothing designs. I read every blog and watched every YouTube video I could find on clothing design. Through this research process I decided to focus on drafting patterns by draping. For me, sewing and fashion are my creative outlets and flat pattern-making just didn’t seem like the organic, creative process I wanted… all that math… ugh. But draping, designing the clothing on the body (well, dress form), sounded like just what I was looking for.

So the process of learning to drape my designs began! I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. The first pattern I draped was a loose fitting pair of pants. I didn’t have a dress form at that point, so I draped the pattern on myself by wearing tight leggings and pinning the muslin to my leggings. And honestly, I still drape pants this way because my dress form doesn’t have legs. And surprisingly, the pants turned out great! After a couple rounds of muslin-fittings of course.

I was hooked. I wanted a dress form sooooo badly, but they were just more than I could afford. But I happened to come across a tutorial on making a foam dress form by casting your body in medical-grade casting material and then filling the cast with expanding foam. Since my mom is a veterinarian, she had fiberglass casting material on hand, so I ordered some foam and we made me a custom-fit dress form!

And I’ve been draping my own patterns ever since. I’ve also developed a love of upcycling thrifted clothing because fabric is just so expensive! It’s amazing all the wonderful fabrics you can find at the thrift store in the form of unwanted clothing.

Then last year, as a master’s student with a busy schedule and lots of research and science writing to do, I needed to take my creative outlet to the next level for the sake of my sanity. So I started Adopt Your Clothes as a place to share my projects and my journey as I continue to learn about sewing and pattern making. Because that’s the thing I love most about sewing, no matter how long you’ve been doing it, there’s always more to learn!

I hope sharing what I’ve learned (and am learning!) along the way is helpful and inspires you to build your own custom hand-made wardrobe.