About

I’m a twenty year old swiss-american girl living in Switzerland.

I love to dance (I’ve been that way my entire life, also had a mother to push me to stay in ballet, so I’m one of the few that stayed in ballet through that age when it was not cool to be in ballet class :)), I love animals (If someone gave me siamese cat I think I’d probably die of happiness: I am an aspiring “old cat lady”), I like taking pictures (especially when I’ve planned out what I’m gonna photograph exactly, creating the concept is fun), I like baked goods and baking (when I have enough time to do it slowly, with showtunes music and lots of dancing around and wasting time and eating the batter :)) and I like “fashion” (although I’d rather call it “playing dress up”, the word fashion kind of annoys me…).

I also love musicals! When I was little I kept it to myself because no one here in Switzerland really knew about it, but my aunt in NY always took me to see at least 1 musical on broadway each year. A few years ago I joined a club here called “Musical Fever” and we put on a show once a year, no grown-ups involved (except for a few former members) :) Teens and young adults between 14 and 22 plan, direct, rehearse, choreograph, build the stage set, do hair and make-up, light, write or arrange the music, play the music live etc. It’s a great experience (even though it’s caused many meltdowns every year) and it’s the best feeling to know that we don’t owe it to anyone but ourselves :)

A general thing I like are projects and concepts. I like imagining and then planning every little detail.

And, what’s important for this blog, I love to sew. I started sewing in the fall of 2008 during my exchange year in Pennsylvania. I was so bored in the suburbs with so much time after school (schools in Switzerland go until 5 usually) that I ordered a 90$ brother sewing machine over amazon and just got started. So glad I made my biggest sewing mistakes in the states where fabric is so cheap, it actually pays off to sew your own clothes! (Unlike here in Switzerland where it just costs more than buying clothes…)

I have been blogging in German since January 2009 about outfits/inspiration/shopping/music/anything that interests me, but I’m bilingual and feel like using my English a little more, and more importantly I wanted to write a sewing blog.

How I got into sewing (+ a bit of ranting about sewing as a hobby :) )

Seeing people online with vintage clothes I would never be able to buy inspired me to sew my own. DIY blogs and other sewers online also inspired me to just start learning how to sew, and maybe I can inspire others to just give it a try? I think especially people my age are often intimidated by the hobby “sewing”, but it’s the best thing! I started out by just jumping right into it, no books no patterns nothing, just fooling around. And I made a few weird tops that I never wore. But then I started looking at my own clothes more closely, tried to figure out what the pieces might look like. I’d trace the pieces of my clothes (sometimes after I took them apart, sometimes they survived it) onto newspaper to see what the pattern pieces have to look like. It took a while for the things I made to be “good”, but all that learning was fun, like figuring out a puzzle, and it was cool to know I was doing it on my own.

So to anyone who thinks “oh, I wish I could sew”: you can. you just have to start and see if you find it fun. if you find the process of making something two dimensional into something three dimensional (or also something (a design) you imagine into something real) fascinating, give sewing a try.  the first few things you make might not be as good as you’d like, but that’s how things are with every hobby (and probably job too, but unfortunately I don’t really have any experience in that field…). I think this explains it well:

and the best part with sewing is, that you’ll start seeing clothing from a completely different angle. you’ll start appreciating nice seams in some of your clothes. you’ll get to know your body-shape a lot better and after a while you can tell if a garment might fit you even when it’s just on a hanger. you’ll start to appreciate dresses not only because they look good, but because you’ll think “my god, how many strips of chiffon had to be hemmed for that?” or “how is it staying up/together?”.  and with every mistake you make you’ll learn something. I mean really learn something for your next project.