Category Archives: City & Guilds

Last week was a VERY full-on week.  It was the first City & Guilds Pattern Cutting Summer School and I worked my four students extremely hard.  They only had half hour lunch breaks and were sent off with homework each night.  I even started to feel a tad guilty about it, especially as the weather was so nice.  No need to feel guilty though, look what fantastic work they produced…..

In just 5 days these students, all of whom were new to pattern cutting, achieved this:

• drafted their own skirt and trouser blocks and made toiles (samples) to check the fit
• wrote a design brief and designed a range of skirts or trousers
• chose a design to then make a pattern for
• made a toile for their own design.

Not to mention undertaking historical, cultural and current design research.

So even though the garments they’re all wearing are only toiles, they all turned out pretty good ones that fit really well.

From left to right, Clare made a pencil skirt with asymmetric pleated detail over one hip.  Clare runs her own sewing classes in Hampshire and decided it was time to venture into pattern cutting.

Sandeep made some lovely pleated waist, tapered leg trousers with turn-ups and a shaped waistband and pockets both with a small cutout detail.  I wish I’d also taken a photograph of the back of the trousers as the back of the waistband was also shaped down into a V which fitted perfectly.  Sandeep set herself a big challenge with these trousers, but made a fantastic job of them as her attention to detail is obvious.  She currently makes beautiful bespoke neck and bow ties.  Check her blog too for some extremely tasteful bunting.  Quite a rarity in the bunting-filled times in which we live!

Sally made a very wearable a-line skirt with a deep shaped yoke, an inverted pleat in the centre front and shaped pockets and seemed very pleased with the result!  I’m happy to say she has immediate plans to make more of them.  Sally teaches textiles and also makes gorgeous embroidered, appliquéd and quilted textile pieces of which you can see more and find out more about what she does on her blog.

And last, but certainly not least, Santa came all the way from Hong Kong for the course!  She’s spending a very creative few weeks in the UK taking courses and attending conferences.  As we speak she will now be in Oxford immersed in the world of corset-making!  Santa came up with a really feminine design for her skirt involving tucks, drapes and gathers and like Sandeep, set herself quite a challenge, but again, achieved an excellent end result.  She was working with two very different fabrics in order to achieve the effect she wanted and I think the result is stunning and flatters her shape perfectly.

By the end of the week we’d resorted to this to fuel the final push………!!

But it was worth it!  Well done to the four of them and thank you for being such great company all week.

I might be running this C&G course again as an intensive week-long course in the autumn, but dates are yet to be confirmed.  If you would be interested email me at the address below to be the first to know of any new dates:

I also run one-day pattern cutting workshops.  You can find out more details here.