Textile has always fascinated me. Not only textile designs – the beauty and the stories they tell, but also fashion design and the construction behind our clothes. Last fall, I signed up for a sewing class where I am learning how to sew garments from scratch – From pattern cutting to sewing a facing, from inserting a zipper to easing.

Sewing one’s own clothes is a very liberating process. Not only because you get to chose, adjust and customize the patterns to your body shape but also because you can sew with fabric you brought back from Tokyo or Paris.

Here is a dress I am finishing. The dress is from a Vogue pattern I bought last December at Spotlight, a now defunct DIY shop in Hong Kong. Spotlight was the only place in Hong Kong where we could find patterns and other crafty DIY necessities. The shop interestingly closed down because Hong Kongers are inherently not DIYers. In a city that boasts the best tailors in the world, home made clothes seems archaic.

Off to finishing the edges.