Why patchwork is important + making room for creative growth

garbie is gaining a full-time employee

I love to make clothes but I love to make patchwork even more. This is the process of combining pieces of fabric to create a larger pattern. Popular in quilting, this process has dominated the fashion world for the past several years. Checkerboard is absolutely everywhere and so is all sorts of other patterns that catch the eye.

I also love patchwork because it is sustainable. I often combine fabric from clothing that is damaged or undesirable (think of a 10K t-shirt at a reuse store) and I turn that into a piece that I will love and wear. 

Patchwork doesn’t have to be complicated, I often use these techniques to combine similar weight fabrics so that I can create more fabric to use in a project. I think patchwork provides visual interest and to me it satisfies my desire to design something unique that only I have.

Some News

I put my two-weeks in at my full-time job this week in order to pursue Garbie and sewing content creation full-time. I get the keys to an office space this week and at the beginning of September sewing will be my full-time gig. I cannot believe it!

I owe such a huge thank you to all of you reading this and I cannot wait to get to work on the projects that have lived inside my brain for so long.

The most amazing thing happened this last month and my sewing zine How to Develop a Sewing Brain went viral on Tiktok. Over 29 days, it consistently sold out of my shop’s daily order limit of 100 copies and kept me so busy that I got out of habit of my daily sewing practice. Don’t get me wrong, I am over the moon to send out so many copies of something that I wrote to people all over the US. Additionally, the success of this zine is what allowed me to transition to Garbie full-time.

I felt the need to create something for myself as a reward. So I went to the thrift store and gathered some garments to repurpose. I made the shirt with three shirts and some thrifted fabric from SCRAP PDX. This garment rekindled my joy with sewing again and I love how it turned out.