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Transcipt:

Caroline: We are recording today on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Coast Salish and Kwakwaka’wakw peoples, including Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish, Musqueam, and K’ómoks first nations.

Helen: Hello, and welcome to Love to Sew. I’m Helen, the designer behind Helen’s Closet Patterns and Cedar Quilt Co.

Caroline: I’m Caroline, the owner of Blackbird Fabrics and BF Patterns.

Helen: We’re two sewing buds who love to sew, and it’s basically all we want to talk about.

Caroline: Today we’re interviewing Bernadette Banner, historical sewist extraordinaire. She answers all of our hand sewing questions, chats with us about historical clothing, and gives us a behind the scenes look at her YouTube channel.

Helen: If you love to sew, this is your show.

Hello, Bernadette. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Bernadette: Thank you so much for having me. I’m very excited to chat with you.

Helen: Oh, we are thrilled to chat with you, too. Can you please introduce yourself to our listeners?

Bernadette: Hi, listeners. I’m Bernadette Banner. I have a YouTube channel on… YouTube. Oh, god. We are starting off on a great foot. Well, I started off as a dress historian. I was training in dress history. Well, actually, how far back are we going? But I started out in costume design for theatre back in New York on Broadway and then, from there, sort of, went into dress history and decided to start posting my personal projects on YouTube.

And that, sort of, ended up becoming a job. So I never really know, like, what is the official title to, like, introduce myself as. YouTuber, if we want to be very base. Historical sewing YouTuber. I focus primarily on the history. So I, you know, modern sewing is not quite my, area of expertise, but the history of sewing, hand sewing, give it to me. I’m all about that.

Helen: Well, that’s amazing. That’s exactly what we’re going to chat with you about today. And we also wanted to know where you’re from and where you’re living right now.

Bernadette: I’m originally from New York. New York is my home, but I am in London currently. I ended up coming over to London for a job starting in 2017 and had been going back and forth a bit. But now I’m here pretty much full time, which is great. I mean, there’s lots to do in both cities, and they’re both wonderful places to live. I’ve been very lucky to get to experience life in both places, but there’s a lot of great dress history opportunities in London, which I’m very merrily taking advantage of right now.

Helen: And the fabric stores, too. My gosh, in one of your videos, you went to, like, 27 fabric stores in one day. And I was like, I wish. I wish.

Bernadette: Yeah. Yeah. I do occasionally think about that every time I go on one of those fabric shopping adventures. It’s like, wow. I don’t know what it’s like not to live in a city that just has, like, a street of fabric shops, just, like, 20 fabric shops.

Helen: My goodness. Yeah, it’s not quite the same, but hey, sometimes you still don’t find what you’re looking for, so…

Bernadette: Yes. Oh, yes.

Helen: …it’s not a guarantee.

Bernadette: I do feel like when you have that much choice, you start to become pickier than you probably should.

Caroline: Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about your career over the years because we’re always very enthused and impressed by anyone who has made sewing their career. So can you tell us, kind of, the evolution of that for you?

Bernadette: Sure. I started out in theatre. I did, I was working on the costume design team for the designers for Broadway in New York. And that was great fun. I was primarily on design, though. So there’s the design teams, which is where I was, and then there are the costume shops, who are, sort of, the fabricators of the clothes. And then there’s wardrobe, which is a whole separate union and department, which does the day-to-day running the dressing, the working with the actors. So I was in design. We, sort of, work up until opening night, getting the clothes together and figuring out what these clothes are going to be. There wasn’t a whole lot of sewing involved in that as you can probably imagine.

And sewing has, kind of, been something, I mean, I did it when I was younger. You know, there was a fashion club in high school that I did, and I enjoyed it. I always put a more costume-y, historical spin on things. But it was always more, sort of, a, a necessary means to an end, you know? It’s not like I’m doing this because I enjoy the sewing it, I was doing it because I wanted, you know, a costume at the end of it or to present the final collection or whatever it was.

And it wasn’t really until I ended up going, because I went right into theatre from high school really, I got my first job at 18, but there was a point where I was just like, I need to stop. I didn’t realise what a rollercoaster the world of theatre is, especially where I was working in the more creative sides of things. I don’t, you know, I don’t know how it is for the actors. But for creatives, it tends to be we top and tail these shows. So that you’re starting the work for the next show at the end of the other show.

So before I knew it, four years had gone by, and I, it was just a blink of an eye, and I thought, you know what, if I’m not careful, I’m going to wake up, and I’m going to be 45. But I need to stop for a second and, you know, go get a college degree, you know, do something else with my life because I was, like, 22 at this point, and I feel like, I mean, it was a fantastic experience, but something feels a little bit risky about, sort of, committing to one thing at 18 and then, just rolling with that for the rest of your life.

I don’t know, maybe it works for some people, but anyway. So while I was at university is when I discovered the history of fashion. I mean, there are fantastic references that we look for in designing for theatre, but, you know, at the end of the day, we have three months to design 300 costumes that need to go on stage, the curtain goes up and everyone’s got to be dressed. So we don’t really have that much time at the end of the day to be like, how historically accurate is this? What would this have actually looked like?

And those were the questions, sort of, running through my mind, doing a late 16th century show at one point, and we put everyone in codpieces, which now I’m like, why would we, why would we do that? Codpieces went out of fashion in the middle of the century. But, you know, these little peculiarities of fashion that come up that you just start to have questions about. Like, mm, I wonder where this came from. Like, where did the codpiece come from? And there’s not really time to look into that. But, you know, I was really interested in that.

So when I went back to school, I had the opportunity to get into more of the study of historical dress, and ultimately, I got put on every Shakespeare and, you know, all the historical productions because I was the only one who wanted to do them. And, you know, I went so hard with the research because that was my interest.

And weirdly enough, although not weirdly, I don’t think, no, very weirdly, they don’t really teach you how to sew in design school because they figure, you know, you’re not going to be doing the sewing. There’s going to be a shop doing the sewing, which I think is a huge mistake. Because it does really help to know how the clothes are constructed in order to design clothes and to do really cool things with seams and shapes, you know, if you know how the clothes work.

So I was, sort of, I had been pushing for that for a few years. Like, there really should be a sewing class here, and a few of my professors were like, why is there not a sewing class here? They ended up sending me over to the graduate department that did have a sewing class, and I was very lucky to be able to take one of their classes. And the big project for that class was you, sort of, have the entire second term, to build a historical garment from a historical pattern. And that was when I just absolutely fell in love with historical reconstruction.

Helen: That must have been so much fun to do, to be given the opportunity to take the time and really explore that creative process. Did you sew using historical methods of sewing as well?

Bernadette: No, so we didn’t have to do original practice. They said, it was a, you know, it was a costume construction class, so ultimately, we did use modern machines and serging and, you know, those sorts of things. But once again, I started to have all these questions because we were working with, like, Janet Arnold, who, you know, if you do historical costuming, you know, Janet Arnold, she took patterns from original garments, you know, publish them as they were historically.

So sometimes they don’t make sense because it’s, like, someone had pieced this, someone didn’t have enough fabric, so we’re just making it work. It was a mistake, you know, that some seamstress in the 18th century just did. Sometimes there are odd seam lines that don’t make sense to us today, but that certainly made sense historically. So I had so many questions about, what was going on in this? And some of the questions, my professor was extremely knowledgeable. You know, she taught me lots, but, you know, some of the things a modern costume maker doesn’t really have the answers to.

Towards the end of my final year, I ended up, one of my professors had put me in touch with the School of Historical Dress here in London. And they weren’t teaching at the time, but the principal there, Jenny Terramani, who was a fantastic dress historian. Hugely respected. She invited me to come work on the newest Janet Arnold book that was coming out the following year. So I got to come over here to London for a few months and work with her to put together this book, and I got to, you know, look at the original garments and see how the patterns are taken and do some reconstruction work myself.

I mean, she basically, when I got into the room with her, she said, do you know how to sew? And I said, yes, I know how to sew. This is what I’ve been training for. And she said, great. Unlearn all of that. I’m going to teach you from scratch. And she taught me how to sew by hand with a historical mindset. And that was when I fell in love with the sewing process. No longer was sewing just a means to an end of a costume, but it was sewing as a form of time travel, it was tangibly getting your hands on history and walking the same path that someone in the 18th century making a pair of stays would have walked.

The same struggles, very, very similar materials, very similar hand movements. and really getting a sense of how much labour went into these clothes. The journey itself became such an enjoyable process that by the time I was finished, I’m like, what do I do with the garment now? I want to start a new project. And that’s when I started sharing my work on social media, and one day it just took off, and now that pays the bills.

Caroline: It is so incredible how you had this journey and then you, sort of, really started relishing in the process and that energy is so infectious on your YouTube channel and in the content that you share. That process that you’re sharing with your audience, I think is what is really pulling us in and is making your content really fun to watch and unique and interesting. And I wonder what was the inspiration, why did you decide you wanted to start sharing about this on the internet and, and what did it feel like when it really started taking off?

Bernadette: I think I was, I mean, I was just excited, you know, I was in this process of learning about historical dress and, you know, by that point I’d been doing it for, a bit more than two years and, you know, I was all set to go, you know, I was set to go on a master’s program for dress history. I was, like, full-on along this journey to go into dress history, and I was just so excited. The trouble with a field like this is that there are such limited career possibilities. You know, there’s the School of Historical Dress, which is a fantastic institution, but you know, they’re not as well funded as, like, the VNA.

Can you really make, you know, a sustainable living working and, you know, teaching historical dress? Is there the, you know, public interest to, like, fund that? You can go work in a museum, but that takes decades of training to get up to a point where you can earn a living wage, and it requires many years of free work, which I wasn’t sure I was able to do. You could go into academia, but again, how does that pay?

So I wasn’t sure what the career prospects were about this, and I was fully preparing myself to get a job somewhere, sort of, tangential. Like, maybe I’d go work at Colonial Williamsburg which is very related to historical dress, but you know, maybe go work in a costume shop or something that wasn’t quite, exploring dress history, but something, sort of, related that I could settle for.

But in the meantime, I was just going to share my excitement about this research journey that I was on. And I didn’t expect it to go, and, you know, I was aware that, you know, people on YouTube made money, but who was interested in the history of dress? Like, no one would be interested in this. There is no possible way that any person on the face of the planet is going, or enough people on the face of this planet are going, to be interested in the history of dress to watch these videos in a way that would make money. I ultimately decided to go onto YouTube because I did have a bit of filmmaking, and it was just, sort of, a natural, sort of, creative outlet for me.

Instagram is great for photos, but I was finding, I wasn’t able to capture the process of hand sewing in one frame. You know, I needed a video to do that. And you know, I love filmmaking as well. So it just, sort of, melded my interests very well to go on to YouTube. And, then unexpectedly, out of nowhere, the one video just took off, and it really exploded.

Helen: It’s absolutely amazing, and we’re so lucky to have you on YouTube to watch, because like Caroline said, you put out this amazing content, and we noticed that you wear historical garments in a lot of your videos, if not all of your videos. So we were wondering, do you ever wear, like, normal clothes?

Bernadette: I do. Yeah. I do dress in a lot of historical dress. Mostly because, I mean, when you study the history of dress, you realise how many amazing silhouettes there are and construction techniques there are and, you know, materials that were used, and just, you know, going to a high street and buying something modern can just be so disappointing in comparison, but no, I do, and increasingly more so now, I have, you know, resorted more to normal dress, just coming out of the pandemic really especially because we’ve been in lockdown for two years and then coming out of that.

People started to recognize me on the street, which was, I mean, it’s always been wonderful. You know, I’ve never had a bad interaction with anyone, but sometimes it can just be a bit uncomfortable.I’m a bit introverted. So, you know, there are some days when I’m just like. I just want to be a normal person today. I don’t want anyone to, like, perceive me in this grocery store. So I’m just gonna be here with my hair down and, you know, a normal pair of trousers on. And it does work. For the most part it does work.

Helen: You’re like a celebrity with your ball cap and your sunglasses, like, trying to avoid eye contact with the paparazzi. No, that makes total sense. But we do really enjoy seeing your outfits on your channel. And one of the questions we had was whether you find wearing historical garments cumbersome or uncomfortable at all, and how did people in those time periods feel wearing those garments? Were they, like, sweaty?

Bernadette: Oh, well. It’s hard to say because, you know, we are not the people of the past, and attitudes towards dress were completely different. Societal attitudes were different. So, you know, they might be very uncomfortable in our clothes that we wear today. But I will say, because I grew up with scoliosis, to the degree that I was in a back brace, and I had to wear that, which is essentially, it was a plastic corset for about five years of my life.

And people think of corsetry as, like, this super constraining, like, oppressive garment that people are fainting in. And I will tell you that from five years of wearing that thing, it became so unnoticeable, like, it was, I mean, you’d think like a hard plastic thing that digs in the waist, like, that would be uncomfortable.

But, you know, I didn’t even notice it. I wouldn’t even, like, perceive that it was there. So, part of me, you know, based on that experience, is led to believe that the clothes that we perceive as uncomfortable to the wearer who is wearing that, you know, every day of their lives, they wouldn’t think twice about it.

I mean, most of us, I think, put on our underwear every day and then proceed to not give it a second thought at any point during the day unless it’s, you know, there’s something wrong with it and there’s an underwire that’s digging in or whatever. But, you know, for the most part the garments that you wear that are comfortable on you, as a corset, you know, that is fitted to you is meant to be, as they were historically, you know, it’s not gonna theoretically be a noticeable annoyance in your life.

Some periods, I think, are more comfortable than others. And, you know, it, again, there’s a class issue here, too, because a lot of the high class women who had to be very fashionable were doing extreme things for the sake of fashion that, yes, would have been uncomfortable. Women who were tight lacing their corsets into 18-inch waists, yeah, that’s got to be uncomfortable. But for the most part, you know, the average middle working class person would just have been wearing clothes in a way that was comfortable to them, in my belief.

Helen: That makes a lot of sense, and I’m sure in some cases, they may be even more comfortable because they’re wearing more breathable fibres, or they have more practicality in their clothes, in a lot of cases. Our modern clothes don’t often give us the practicality of some of those historical garments, and I think it’d be nice to swan around in all those layers of fabric, personally.

Bernadette: Oh, it’s delightful in the winter. I will say, you know, in very, very cold days in New York, I’ve put on a couple of petticoats and been just fine.

Caroline: That’s awesome. So yeah, let’s talk about your YouTube channel a little bit because as we mentioned, we love it. It’s delightful. It’s informative. And you share your process making amazing historical garments. So we wanted to, first off, just ask what are your favourite fashion eras.

Bernadette: Oh, that’s such a hard question. I like to say, sort of, academically, my favourite era is whatever era I’m working in. Because, you know, you get so into the research that you start noticing all the little details and appreciating everything so much more. Like, you know, I’ll say Regency is my least favourite, but then I’ll do a Regency project and realise, oh, there are so many really interesting aspects of this period or whatever.

The period that I keep coming back to the most is between 1890 and 1910, mostly because that’s the period that I like to wear the most. It’s great because it, it has a very distinct period look about it. You know, it does look very, oh, you have walked out of a portrait. You are from another time.

But you don’t have to deal with crinolines and panniers and bustles of, you know, previous fashion centuries that, while tolerable, are slightly cumbersome in how today’s society is set up. You know, you’re not going to very easily be navigating the tube at peak time in a crinoline gown.

Helen: Would that be considered the Victorian or Edwardian periods? Because you talk about them all the time, and to be honest, I don’t know what that is.

Bernadette: Oh, to be fair, these, these Victorian, Edwardian, Georgian, these labels are very Anglo-centric because they refer to the monarch of England at the time. So in the U.S. or Australia or Canada, it really shouldn’t be called that. But, yeah, the Victorian period is from, like, 1837 when Victoria takes the throne to 1901, and that would be 1850, so the crinoline is Victorian.

The Victorian period is so massive, it spends most of that 19th century decade, so it’s difficult to say, like, this is Victorian and have, like, one singular image because you have the big, you know, crinoline, what is called in the U.S., sort of, Civil War era, you know, those big southern belle gowns.

Caroline: Mhmm.

Bernadette: But you also have the bustle dresses, and you have the 1890s with their enormous sleeves. So it’s, fashion changes quite a bit, but, it’s all Victorian, technically.

Helen: I would love a bustle. I mean, bring back the bustle, I say.

Bernadette: Bring back the bustle!

Caroline: You spend a lot of time making super detailed garments on your channel and we were wondering if you could share maybe your most labour intensive garment that you’ve made so far.

Bernadette: That’s a good question. I want to say, I did a reconstruction of a 15th century gown at one point. The most labour intensive garment, actually two, I have not done on YouTube. One was an 18th century gown that was stitched by hand because the 18th century, the sewing machine isn’t really introduced domestically until the 1860s. So all of my work in the previous periods is done by hand in the spirit of that. And then there was a pair of 17th century stays which took absolutely weeks and shredded my hands to bits because it just, there’s so much really tough stitching.

But for the channel, as was, I think, the question. It’s a 15th century gown, which was again all stitched by hand, and there were, I think, ten panels in that, so, you know, long dress panels that all had to be stitched, and then the seams finished all by hand. I had a great time with it. It was lots of fun.

Helen: I mean, I’ll take your word for it.

Bernadette: If you enjoy hand sewing.

Helen: …which we’re going to get into. And I believe by the end of the episode, all of our listeners will be itching to get their hands on some hand sewing. Do you have any projects coming up that you’d like to tease for our listeners? Any fun historical things planned for this fall?

Bernadette: Oh, my goodness. Oh, I have so many things planned, as is, I think, the plague of the person who sews is just the project list is endless. I’m working on a really interesting project right now that I’ve actually been working on all day, so I’m very excited about it. I have designed this cape, this wool cape that I’m very looking forward to wearing for this autumn and winter. But it’s not really based in any sort of period. It is a self design.

But, what I really love to do is take elements of historical dress and pull them into silhouettes that I think look really cool to wear for modern day. So this cape has got a pleating configuration in the back that is very reminiscent of 18th century gowns just because I love the fullness that that allows. It’s very cape-like. You know, the dresses themselves are cape-like, so why not use that in an actual cape?

Then I’ve sort of configured the sleeve portion to have a little bit of that early 1890s, little puff. There’s a yoke on the back that’s going to have all this braid work that’s very Edwardian. So I love, sort of, picking out the details of history that draw my eye and, sort of, putting them together in something that can also be worn. I mean, you can also wear historical dress in the modern day, but you know, a garment that feels like it was also designed in the 21st century.

Helen: Oh, it sounds so dreamy. We also wanted to ask a little behind the scenes question about your videos because they’re very well edited and produced, and your content is super fun. It makes us laugh and some of your videos are quite lengthy and cover these large multi day projects. So we were wondering many things, like, do you do all the editing and do you plan everything out in advance? And do you write all the content yourself? Like tell us your secrets.

Bernadette: I used to do everything by myself, and it nearly killed me.

Helen: I knew it.

Bernadette: Looking back on it, I’m like, I don’t know how I did this. I was uploading, like, one to two sewing videos a month, hand sewing half these projects, doing all the editing myself, all the writing, all the script work, all the voiceover. I mean, I still do all the voiceover, obviously. But I just, I mean, I worked every waking hour of the day, every day of the week, for about two and a half years. And that, I mean, it nearly killed me at a point.

And it’s unfortunate because I’ve set a standard on this channel of, you know, two sewing videos a month, what, I was uploading weekly at one point, four videos a month, two of them were sewing videos or whatever, three videos a month. Now to the point where, you know, people are like, how come you don’t put out as many sewing videos and it’s like because I’m taking care of myself. I mean, I’m having a sane work schedule.

No but I do have really really fantastic people working with me now, and I’m very very lucky to be in a position where I can start working with people. You know, the channel’s in a place where it makes enough money that you know I don’t need all of it to live. So let’s bring in an editor. My sibling very conveniently at one point was moving out of a job and was looking to get into more creative pursuits. I had no idea they were such a fantastic editor, but it turns out they are. They do really amazing video work, and they know my style really well.

They, they sew. So there is obviously that bit of understanding, which has been such an issue for me in the past is not being able to hand off my sewing projects to an editor who doesn’t understand the sewing process, and, you know, it doesn’t know where to put things. So it’s been such a lifesaver to have an editor to work with. And, you know, Danny, my editor, my sibling has a great creative language, and they’ll put their own little sort of creative spin on things, which adds a whole new level of humour to the videos that, you know, the audience turns out to love.

I have a great assistant, Heathcliff, who started out helping me with research and who also turns out is a fantastic stitcher as well. So now we started off, I would give them little bits of sewing to help me with, you know, really I only have to film half the garment because garments tend to be symmetrical, so if we’re doing a shirt, you know I’ll film one sleeve and they’ll, stitch the other one while I work on the collar or whatever, so that, sort of, helped speed things up a bit.

But now I’ve started handing off some to them and, sort of, giving them some independent projects. So, you know, hopefully we’ll be able to produce more sewing content as we go along with, you know, here’s the Heathcliff project, and I’m, sort of, in the background, and Heathcliff explains things to me, and I’m asking questions, and Heathcliff is asking questions, and we’re, sort of, you know, having a communication, but that’s still their independent projects.

And they’re also able to do, they’re more interested in menswear, so they’re, they’ll be covering more menswear subjects, which I get requests for quite a bit. While I’ll cover more, I don’t know, I guess womenswear, just so that there’s more variety of sewing content on the channel. It’s been a really interesting journey, and it’s a work in progress. You know, there there are still places I would like to go with making this into more of a streamlined production, but all in good time.

Helen: Somebody give this woman a TV show.

Bernadette: Oh, god. I don’t know if I can handle that just yet.

Caroline: Yeah, I mean, your channel has a really nice variety of videos as well. You mentioned sewing videos, but you also have some really fun videos where you’re, like, reviewing historical costumes in movies or other kinds of projects or, kind of, just talking about context or historical garments more practically versus, like, you know, actually sewing them up. But I wonder, like, what is your favourite type of video to make? Is it still the sewing or are you enjoying some of the other content as well?

Bernadette: My favourite is having that variety. If I’m doing a lot of sewing, I do, sort of, get frustrated with a project and need a break at some point, but I really love, you know, doing some research into a topic. Because costume design is my background, I love looking at costumes and analysing costumes and assessing how character and story and costume all sort of intertwine with the history of dress and, you know, in a real capacity.

So I do genuinely love all the different aspects of the content that I produce, and they’re all very important. You know, they all serve very important different purposes on the channel. The sewing is really great, you know, for the people who love to sew, and I, you know, there are some very very passionate audience members for the sewing projects, which I love I always feel good putting out a sewing video because I know it’s going to be received with such love, but ultimately, and, you know, to an extent, my initial hunch was, there’s a finite audience of people who love to watch sewing videos.

You have to, at some point, expand the pool, and that’s where the costume reviews of popular shows come in, that’s where the sort of research videos on really widely wondered topics like corsetry and how did they pee in those dresses? You know, the questions that anyone on the street might have. So I like to take those topics and put them out, so that those can sort of go out to a new audience and, sort of, get people down that funnel of thinking about the history of dress. Oh yeah, so how did they pee in those dresses? What were those dresses made out of? How were they constructed?

And all of a sudden, you know, people start out watching a, a video on Bridgerton costumes and end up felling the hem on their pair of jeans. Like, that is the ultimate goal, for me, is to widen the awareness of dress history and whether or not people go on to sew, that would be my, my dream, is to get people sewing for themselves, or just, aware of the labour that goes into clothing production, because ultimately that raises awareness of, well, how are my clothes made? Who’s making my clothes? How am I buying this shirt for two pounds? Who made it that warranted that price tag? And how much were they being paid?

You know, so ultimately, we get people thinking about fast fashion, which, that’s a whole different rabbit hole. What’s it now, the statistic is the textile industry is now the second leading pollutant in the world or something, more above aviation and shipping combined. It’s something just staggering, is the statistic. So, any awareness and anything we can do to, sort of, get people thinking about that is good, ultimately. And if we can do that through entertainment and historical dress and traditional crafts, all the better.

Helen: Oh, definitely. I love the idea of someone stumbling upon your channel to watch a little costume review of a TV show and breaking out their sewing machine or even just grabbing a needle and thread because you do emphasise how easy it is to get into sewing with just these simple tools. And we’re going to pivot now and talk a little bit more about hand sewing. But first we’re going to take a quick break and we’ll be right back after this message.

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And we’re back. Okay, Bernadette, you are a hand sewing goddess, literally. You have some great videos teaching hand sewing on your channel. So, definitely, listeners, check those out if you want to see some in action. But Bernadette also just published, recently, a really helpful book all about hand sewing came out last year called Make, Sew, and Mend: Traditional Techniques to Sustainably Maintain and Refashion Your Clothes, and we’ve been wanting to make an episode focused on hand sewing for quite some time. But we needed the perfect guest, and now here you are!

Bernadette: Hello!

Helen: Hello! Before we get into, like, the nitty gritty of how to hand sew, we wanted to ask what do you see as being the benefits of hand sewing versus machine sewing?

Bernadette: Oh, there are no restrictions to hand sewing. It’s fantastic. It’s so freeing. You don’t need a sewing machine. Of course, those can be a bit pricey, but you also don’t need electricity. So, you know, if, if the power goes out, if you’re in an environment where electricity is a bit difficult to come by.

Nowadays we are, at least in the UK, energy prices are just appalling right now. So the less electricity we can use, the better. It’s really great to know that you can make entire garments with just your hands and a needle and thread, as people have been doing for centuries before the invention of the sewing machine in the 1860s. Electricity doesn’t come until around the 1920s. So, yeah, it’s really freeing.

Caroline: It’s also, like, you’re not tied to this, like, big heavy machine that you have to lug around. You can bring your hand sewing with you, which I always thought was so great if you want to sew in front of the TV or at the dinner table or whatever, you can do that. I’ve also heard you talk about how hand sewing can be really strong and durable.

And I think that there is a misconception that hand sewing is a little bit more delicate, especially as modern day sewists. I know we do a lot of hand sewing when we’re maybe doing, like, a, a hem or a little detail in a garment. We don’t really think of hand sewing an entire garment. So can you talk a little bit more about the strength and durability that can come along with hand sewing.

Bernadette: You are right on the nail, right there. Is that the expression? Probably not.

Helen: Something like that.

Caroline: Good enough.

Bernadette: Close enough. You know what I mean. I do like to raise that point when I talk about hand sewing is that because we now have sewing machines nowadays that can do the main constructional seams for us, we don’t need to know how to sew durably and functionally.

We just need to be able to do the tasks that machines can’t do, which are the delicate tasks. So when we learned to hand sew, we learned to hand sew very delicately, which is absolutely not how it was done historically. Hence, you know, my mentor saying to me, unlearn everything you know about sewing, and I’m going to teach you how to do this historically.

Because historically there was a lot of strength that needed to be put into the sewing, into the thread, into the seam, into the pulling of the thread. I mean, to a, to an extent, because you don’t want to put too much tension in the fabric that can’t take a lot of tension. But, you know, that’s all part of the learning and experimenting process. The seams do have to be very strong. And there are stitches that you can do.

You know, the running stitch is what we usually think to do in hand sewing. But that’s the weakest of the stitches. The back stitch is the strongest. The buttonhole stitch is also quite strong, but you don’t use that for seams. But for seams, you know, when you backstitch a seam, I’ve had garments where the fabric itself has worn away before the seam has even thought about disintegrating.

Helen: Wow, that’s amazing. And a back stitch would be a stitch where you’re going back over the stitches as you move forward. So you’re, kind of, going forward and back, is that right?

Bernadette: Yeah, so you bring the needle up at one point. When you insert the needle again, you insert it at the exit point of the previous stitch, put the needle under, and then bring it up a little ways forward, bring the needle through, and then enter it back in at the exit point of that previous stitch again. So you have, sort of, this dual pull, this forward and backward pull on the thread instead of just a one way pull. So when you pull on that seam, you don’t even need to knot the thread really. It’s not going anywhere because the thread is simultaneously being pulled in both directions. It can’t go anywhere.

Helen: Oh, okay. Yes, that makes sense. And we were wondering how you decide whether you’re going to hand sew something or machine sew something. Is hand sewing always that’s the choice and machine sewing, sort of, the, the concession?

Bernadette: Hand sewing is, is usually the preferred method. But I, I go by what history says because a lot of what I do is, is reconstruction work, and it’s for the, purpose of learning about history. So, especially in garments pre-, sort of, 1860’s everything will be hand sewn regardless. Just because that’s how this garment would have been made, and I want to try and get as close as possible to those original methods.

But you know, by the late Victorian period where they did have sewing machines, it’s, sort of, up to the discretion of the maker. So a lot of the longer seams like skirt seams and bodice seams would be done by machine, but there’s still quite a bit of hand sewing.

So, sleeves were often set in by hand because, especially with the treadles that are, sort of, mounted into tables, it’s, sort of, difficult to get the armscye to lay flat, and, of course, it’s very possible to stitch very, very strongly by hand. So you would put in a nice, sturdy backstitch into those sleeve seams, and those can take all the strain in the world.

So yeah, it just depends on, you know, I like to look back to history to see what were they doing, because clearly they’d figured many, many things out over the years. And I like to, you know, I like to use their wisdom where possible.

Helen: Oh, definitely. We often tell our listeners that setting in sleeves by hand is the way to go if you’re finding it frustrating because even on a machine, it’s challenging to put those two opposing curves together. So hand sewing is definitely your friend in those cases.

Bernadette: Yeah, you have so much more control over hand sewing as well, which is another, yet another reason why I love it. But with sleeves that can be tricky. You just, you have complete control over exactly where you’re putting the needle for every single stitch, and that’s, it makes things a lot easier, in my opinion.

Caroline: Is there anything that you wouldn’t hand sew?

Bernadette: Hmm. I do quite like to do long structural seams by machine. You know, a skirt seam, a sleeve seam. You know, the long sleeve seams, not the armscye. Seams that are just long and repetitive. Obviously, I will do them by hand if it’s pre-sewing machine era, because that’s just what would have been done, but for speed purposes, it’s nice when it’s not shown. And that is one of the hacks. I want to call it a cheat. I won’t say really it’s a cheat, because what is historical accuracy anyway?

But if a film or a theatre or TV production wants to get really close to reproducing historical dress without necessarily taking all of the time to, you know, if they’re on a tight budget. If they do all of the long seams by machine that are not seen and then do every, you know, all the top stitching, all the visible seams by hand that is seen, it can actually produce a garment that looks really authentic without, you know, having to spend the full amount of time hand sewing a long skirt seam by hand, which is inevitably going to take three times as long.

Caroline: Mhmm.

Helen: Yeah, that’s probably not in the budget in a lot of cases.

Caroline: What would you say are, like, the bare minimum tools that you would need to hand sew an entire garment?

Bernadette: Definitely a needle and thread. Those, those are the prime essentials. You also probably need something sharp to cut the thread. Otherwise, you’re doing it with your teeth, and don’t do that. I would also say a thimble, which I know people are, are very contentious about this topic, but I’m very pro-thimble, especially if you’re doing a lot of hand sewing and you’re doing hand sewing on stiffer or tightly woven fabrics. By your fourth hour, you will be very grateful for that thimble.

Helen: I’m grateful for it immediately when I use mine. I’m such a thimble fan. And now when I don’t have it, I just, I’m so whiny because I just have to stab it with my flesh, and it’s not fun at all.

Bernadette: No.

Caroline: Do you have a preferred type of thimble? And I also wonder, for, like, the uninitiated, if you could just explain quickly how to use a thimble.

Bernadette: Yeah, the thimble goes on the middle finger of your dominant sewing hand. So, I’m right handed, so my thimble goes on my right middle finger. That’s the finger that you push the needle through the fabric with. Theoretically, if for some reason you are accustomed to sewing in a different way, where you’re pushing the needle through with a different finger, by all means, use a thimble on whatever finger most suits you.

But there are the hard metal or plastic thimbles, which certainly, I mean, that’s the traditional thimble that has been used for centuries, and what people most likely think of when they see a thimble. Those can also be a bit cumbersome to use and a bit more difficult to get used to. So if you’re finding using a thimble difficult, I would go looking for a leather thimble.

Sometimes they make rubber thimbles or, softer thimbles that are, sort of fit like a sock over your finger. But they’re much softer, and so they conform to your finger a lot better, they grip your finger a lot better. They’re much better if you have long fingernails, like I tend to do because they can, sort of, you know, it’s not going up against a hard plastic ceiling.

Helen: Oh, yeah. That makes sense. And you do have gorgeously long nails, I noticed that I’m like, how is she sewing with these nails?

Bernadette: I find them very useful, you know, get those little threads.

Helen: That’s true. Are there some tools for hand sewing that are maybe a nice to have, but not essential?

Bernadette: Oh, if you’re working with linen thread which isn’t very common nowadays, but if you’re doing historical reconstruction, you probably are. You will definitely need some wax for that. You probably won’t if you’re working with modern synthetic or cotton or silk threads. Some people do like to wax all of their threads just for strength and, you know, good behaviour, so that’s a nice to have. I guess a seam ripper is, kind of, nice to have. I personally just use tiny scissors, but you know, having another specialty tool is sometimes fun.

Helen: It’s amazing that it requires so little to do hand sewing because again it’s a big expense to have a machine and, it is cumbersome if you want to travel and things like that and not everyone can afford to buy a sewing machine, especially a nice one, and in a lot of ways hand sewing I think would be better than a cheap sewing machine.

Bernadette: Yeah.

Caroline: And one of the things that I find challenging with hand sewing is that I always am tempted to pull up a really long length of thread so I don’t have to keep re-threading my needle, but then the thread gets tangled and knotted, and I end up just cursing. So I wonder if you have a tip for that, if there’s, like, a, kind of, go-to length of thread that you always go for that’s, like, manageable, but maybe not I’m gonna get tangled all the time.

Bernadette: This is an interesting point because this is an ongoing argument I’ve had with some of my teachers in the past. They tell you never to cut a length of thread longer than the length from your hand to your forearm, which I think is too short, because you run out of thread so quickly. The argument for that is that you avoid the knotting and the tangling, which I totally get. Absolutely. Yes. It, it does, having a shorter thread does prevent a lot of that.

However, because when you, I don’t know if people hand sew differently nowadays, but the way I was taught to thread a needle is you just put the thread through and you just let it, and you have a tail, a shorter tail at one end, but you, don’t knot the thread in the needle. So what I like to do is I like to almost but not quite double that length and just let the rest of it live in the tail and, sort of, slowly as I stitch, let the tail shorten and get more length into my stitching thread. So that way I get to stitch a little bit longer with the same thread without having to re-thread, but also, theoretically, avoiding much of the tangling.

Historically, I have seen, I have seen wood cuttings of tailors in the 16th century holding their arms way out to the side because their thread is still so looped, there’s still so much slack in the thread. So I have certainly brought that to a teacher, too, and said, look, look. This method is historically accurate. And how do you argue with that?

Helen: Maybe it was a picture of somebody doing it wrong though.

Bernadette: Oh, it was a tailor. It was a trained tailor sitting on his, his, table as they do with a, with a, I think it, I don’t think it’s the one with an awl stuck in the table, but I don’t know. I don’t know.

Helen: There is an upper limit because I guess the answer is it shouldn’t be longer than your arm span because then you’re going to have to do multiple pulls to get it through. But I do like a long thread and, I have to confess that I almost always double up my thread because it’s just easier to do the knot at the end and have, you know, make sure the needle’s going to stay in there because there’s two lines. Is that a bad thing to do when you’re hand sewing?

Bernadette: No, absolutely not. You can do double if, especially for strength, if you want some extra strength. It does make your seams slightly bulkier, which is not going to be noticed if you’re doing, you know, if you’re working with a stiffer fabric. But if you’re working with a really fine fabric, that’s probably going to be noticeable. But, you know, there, there are ways to start the thread in the fabric itself, where you don’t see the knot or the tail, but that doesn’t involve putting a knot into the thread itself.

Helen: Right, and then you just have to make sure that your needle doesn’t become unthreaded as you go along.

Bernadette: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. As in the discussion of backstitching afore you know, the backstitch is a very secure stitch, so if you just put one or two, backstitches at the start of your stitch, that will be enough to hold it. And if you’ve got two layers of fabric, you can start your needle in, you know, somewhere yonder off a few inches, and then bring it up at your stitching point, pull it through so that that tail disappears, and the end of the thread is caught between the layers of fabric. You do your two backstitches, and it’s just, you know, a nice, clean start to that thread, where there’s no tail, no, like, close cut where it’s gonna come undone.

Helen: Oh, smart. Yeah, just giving it that, like, little tug so it pops into the fabric. Yeah. Oh, I love that. It’s, like, such a satisfying little sewing thing to do. Pop! And do you have a go to thread preference like cotton or poly or silk or linen?

Bernadette: It depends on the project and it depends on the material that I’m working with. I rarely ever use poly threads. That’s just a personal decision because I, you know, I work primarily historically, so where is there use for poly threads in my work? I think I use cotton thread the most because I work most in late 19th century and cotton was the most popular at that point, but I do love some good linen thread. It’s just so historic to work with. It’s so uncommon today, so it’s almost, like, a luxury to get to work with it.

Caroline: Yeah, I was watching your video where you were making that black blouse with the black linen thread and you were waxing the thread, and I thought, oh, my gosh, I would love to try sewing with linen thread. It was really inspiring because I’ve never actually seen linen thread. So I’d have to seek it out.

Bernadette: Yeah, you Do have to, sort of, special order it online, because it’s not usually in the craft stores.

Caroline: That’s very cool. We’ve also seen you pin your fabric to a tailor’s ham so that you can hold the fabric taut as you sew it. Do you need to do this for every seam, or is this only certain seams? And maybe certain fabrics that you find need this method?

Bernadette: Oh, you don’t have to do it for anything, it’s just if it’s comfortable for you. It just helps, you know, if you find yourself when you’re hand sewing, if you’re holding your seam very tightly with your other hand to give it the tension that you need, if you find that you’re doing that and after the fifth hour, your other hand is just suffering, it can really help to pin the end of that seam, or, you know, the end that’s closest to you, to a cushion, a stiff cushion, or a tailor’s ham, and to just hold it with the other hand at a tautness that is comfortable, but that doesn’t involve straining your fingers. I have definitely been doing long hems for hours, and, you know, by the end of the day just had to run that hand under hot water. Like, why didn’t I just pin this to a cushion? I could have saved myself so much pain.

Caroline: Yeah. I have to ask, because you mentioned earlier, a project, kind of, killing your hands, or I can’t remember exactly what you said, but that it was hurting your hands, and I wonder, like, with all of the hand sewing that you do, how do you, sort of, mitigate that strain and, and that wear and tear on, on your beautiful hands, which don’t look ruined at all in the in the videos, and we see some closeups. So I wonder what your secret is there.

Bernadette: Wow. My secret is I work very slowly.

Caroline: Ah, ok

Bernadette: So there is time, you know, I’m not, I don’t sew every working day, which is not accurate to what would have been done by tailors and seamstresses historically. I will say for a period of time when I was, you know, before YouTube, when I was working in reconstruction full time, my hands were a mess.

I have photographs of my hands. They are disgusting. They’re bleeding. They’re scabbed. They’re blistered. They’re calloused. For the most part, it doesn’t hurt. It’s just, you know, the repetition of pulling the needle through, which again, this is all after wearing the thimble. So please wear a thimble if you’re doing this sort of level of hand sewing work.

But it does help that, you know, this week I’m working on a sewing project, and this week I’m working on a research project. So I can, sort of, not kill my hands. Not to say that every sewing project will do that. I was working on some particularly strenuous sewing projects through really stiff fabrics. That, usually, is a bit more hard on the hands than, you know, working with a linen. When I was doing that black linen shirt I don’t think my, my hands wouldn’t have shown anything from that. And that’s a good, I don’t know, 30, 40 hours of stitching in that.

Helen: Oh, my goodness. Well, I’m glad to hear that you’re taking more breaks these days. You don’t have quite so many blisters. You go through a lot of stitches in this book and show people how to sew these varying stitches. Can you tell our listeners what are the main stitches they’ll need to know in order to hand sew their garments?

Bernadette: Yeah, I like to say you can pretty much make anything if you know the basic three stitches, and that is the running stitch, the back stitch, and historically, it’s called the felling, or the hemming, stitch, but nowadays we know it as the whip stitch. Those three stitches pretty much are the basis for all fundamental construction.

So the running stitch, which I’m sure most of us are familiar with, is just you know, in, out, in, out. It’s a very fast stitch. So historically, you know, on long skirt seams, for example, which today we would just machine for speed. But those seams don’t need to take strain. You know, they’re not holding a bodice together. They’re not holding a sleeve on. They’re just, sort of, existing there. So most of those seams are just running stitched for speed. Running stitching is great for speed, but it is not the strongest stitch.

So if you do need that strength, the backstitch is your friend. That would be for bodice seams, for sleeve seams, you know, anything that’s when, when you pull or when you move or it’s going to be laced very tightly. Corsets would be backstitched.

And there is a combination, which conveniently is called the combination stitch in some texts, that is a mixture between the running and the backstitch. So for every two or three running stitches you take, you take one backstitch. Just so that, you know, you do get that speed of running stitching, but you also, every two or three stitches, you get that lock into place. So that, you know, if that thread snaps at one point, the whole seam isn’t going to rip out, but it’s just going to rip out until the point of the next backstitch, which is very convenient.

And then there’s the felling stitch, or the whipstitch, which is great if you need to sort of fold one fabric over another, as in a hem. So if you need to hem anything, you know, fold it over, fold it over again, and whip stitch it all the way down. It’s a nice, fast stitch. It’s pretty strong. Generally, these don’t need to take strain but it’s pretty quick. and well, the smaller you go, the, the, the more time it takes. But I love felling. I find it so relaxing.

Caroline: Yeah, and speaking of the stitch length, do you have, like, a best practice or a go-to length for your stitches?

Bernadette: I tend to work pretty small. It depends on the weight of your fabric though. If you’re working with a very thick wool, for example, you’re not going to be able to get tiny stitches just because of the, when you pick up the fabric, the bend that it needs to take to be able to put the needle back through, it’s going to, be a bit thicker than, working with a very fine silk.

But I love to use tiny needles, which make for tiny stitches. So the smaller your stitches are, the less space there is between the stitches. So the stronger that stitch is. It is also seen a bit more. So if you’re doing a felled hem, for example, the finer your stitches are, the more stitches you’re putting into it.

If you’re hemming through to the front side of the garment, the more that will be seen. So for some felled hems, you actually want to do a longer stitch so that there’s fewer pin pricks to the front. But you know, it is once again dependent on time. It’s dependent on fabric weight. It’s dependent on needle size. And…

Helen: Dependent on mood.

Bernadette: …exactly. Dependent on mood. Historically, you see all sorts of stitching. You see fine, beautiful, perfect stitching, and you certainly see some very angry, very frustrated stitching. So anything goes, and everything’s valid.

Caroline: I would love to see, like, the, all of that in one garment. You can, kind of, imagine the person, like, getting more and more frustrated.

Bernadette: Well, even in early couture garments, in, you know, late 19th century couture garments, you would be shocked at the stitching on some of these garments. I find it very reassuring, though.

Caroline: I also wonder, like, in, you know, our modern sewing, when we’re using all of our machines, we’re really used to just throwing a seam through an overlock just to finish that seam or using a zigzag stitch. So, how are you finishing seams when you’re actually hand sewing a garment? Are you just leaving those edges raw? Or do you have another method that you use?

Bernadette: Once again, it depends on the period because different periods have different standards for finishing seams. Historically, fabrics were woven, tended to be woven a bit tighter. So they were less prone to fraying and finishing seams was slightly less of a must-do as it is nowadays, which doesn’t help me because I’m working with modern fabrics, and that is very much my issue.

But pre-19th century, most of the seams are turned and felled. Seam allowances, you know, main seams as well as hems are just, you know, turned under and felled. But by the 19th century, you start getting fabrics that are just over sewn, so, sort of, like, a whip stitch going over the raw edge, which just helps to, sort of, hold those last few rows of the weave in place. It doesn’t, you know, you don’t want to do that on a very delicate silk, but you know it’ll do for a tightly woven cotton or wool or silk taffeta.

But they would also pink the edges of some seams in the 19th century that, you know, are tightly woven enough to do that, as well as in the 18th century, it was great for decoration as well. They would just pink the edges and ruffle them up and, sort of, put them on the outside of dresses. So it’s, it depends on the project and the period and mood.

Helen: I like the idea of using that whip stitch or felled stitch to, to finish a seam. Doing a flat felled seam is something that we see a lot in sewing patterns, and in some cases it’s really hard to get into tricky areas like inside a sleeve or just hard to fold that fabric under and sew it on the machine. So, again, I can imagine hand sewing coming in really handy in those scenarios because you have so much control.

Bernadette: Oh, absolutely. I don’t even know how you would finish a seam, a sleeve seam, an armscye seam. Not by hand.

Helen: I mean, I’ve done it. You just have to really cram it under the foot.

Bernadette: By that point, you might as well just hand sew it.

Helen: It’s true.

Caroline: It’s so true.

Bernadette: It will take less time, I think.

Helen: Oh, fine! Okay, we talked a little bit about hand sewing a whole garment. And I have to admit it does seem a little overwhelming to me because I am used to doing things quickly on my machine. But I’m curious about it, and I’m wondering if you have Any tips for building that patience for hand sewing? Maybe it’s just taking on a whole project and seeing how it goes.

Bernadette: Yeah, I do find it helps to appreciate the process itself. I did not really enjoy sewing and not really enjoy hand sewing before I, sort of, started to look into the history and to really start appreciating the garments themselves and the, sort of, connection to history, the hand sewing journey provided.

That might be a bit of a, a personal thing, but certainly that helps to enjoy the process, but I also think hand sewing is such a great project just to have as a fidget material, you know, so when I’m watching Netflix or, you know, watching a YouTube video, I love to have some sewing with me.

If I’m taking a long train journey, I love to have, you know, little hand sewing bits with me. It’s just really great to keep the hands occupied. I love to, you know, take my sewing out to a park on a nice day. It’s great to be able to, like, have a craft to entertain you, really to entertain your hands and to, sort of, get that fidgety energy, if you’re like me and you have fidgety energy. I feel like, you know, us crafty people tend to.

But it’s, it’s about enjoying the journey, and, because if you’re ultimately in this just to have a finished garment, hand sewing is really just going to feel like it’s slowing you down. But if you’re in it for the enjoyment of the process itself, I think you, we will very much enjoy hand sewing.

Caroline: And at least give it a chance because you never know if you might like it, even if it

might not seem like that much fun to begin with. But especially with your YouTube channel in the background to keep folks company, I feel like they’ll get really excited about it.

Bernadette: Yeah, and you do have to give it some time. You do have to develop that muscle memory because in the beginning when you’re just, sort of, trying to get your head around what the stitch is and remember how to repeat it and you know how to get your seam even, and it’s not turning out the way you want it to.

But once you’ve got that rhythm and your, your hands can just do it. and, you know your brain is watching Netflix, and your hands are just doing it, that is, like, that is the state of bliss to be in. And that will come with practice, but it doesn’t, it doesn’t happen immediately. And when I first start a stitch, I do feel that frustration of, why isn’t this perfect right now? But, you know, once you get it, then, like, that’s, that’s where the real, real fun starts.

Helen: It makes me think about knitting because I learned how to knit a few years ago, and it was so hard to learn how to do it, but now that I know how, it just feels like riding a bike or, I don’t know, swimming. Like, it just feels like second nature, and it’s so much fun. So I imagine it’s a similar experience once you’re really accustomed to hand sewing.

Bernadette: Yeah, definitely. I do think we crafty people also tend to have a bit of a superpower in the ability to pick up hand, you know, muscle tasks a lot easier because, you know, we are used to knowing how to train our bodies in that way, so we do have a bit of benefit.

Caroline: Mhm.

Helen: It’s true. We’re already pretty skilled at handling the fabric. It’s just a, a different needle application.

Bernadette: Yeah, yeah, just putting your knowledge to a different sort of flex, I guess.

Caroline: And I wonder if you have any recommendations for a movie or TV series with, in your opinion, the best costumes.

Bernadette: Yes. There are a few, but I will say Gentleman Jack has stood out to me as just gorgeous. It’s a series that takes place in the 1830s about the historical figure Ann Lister. Um, and there, you know, there are a bunch of characters. It is primarily upper class. There, you know, there’s a bit of class range, but primarily upper class, which is what it is.

But what I really love about that show in particular is that not only does the designer and the build team pay impeccable attention to the construction, the historical existing construction of these clothes. You can see hand stitching where there should be hand stitching. You can see the pattern cutting is echoing what would have been done in the period as being carried over from the Regency period and how that develops into 1830s.

It’s just, you can tell there’s been so much thought put into the design. But what I love about that series in particular is that it doesn’t deal solely in the people that you see in portraits. There is portraiture of Ann Lister. There’s, like, two. But there are instances where the designer has had to do some design work, because Anne Lister is, is noted for being, sort of, one of the first very out lesbians in history, really, and her style of dress was noted in her diaries as being, sort of, non-conformist and more skewed towards the masculine. So the designer has had to invent because there’s no portrait evidence of people like this. So the designers had to invent, sort of, get into her head and based on what clothing and resources and fashions she would have available to her in that period, build her wardrobe.

So there’s still very much an element of costume design as an art form in it, but it’s within the constraints of what this character realistically would have had access to in that period. Yeah, she could absolutely have worn a top hat because she could have gone into a gentleman’s milliner shop and, and bought one.

There’s no portrait evidence of the real Ann Lister ever having worn a top hat, but there’s no reason why she couldn’t have. She’s wearing men’s work boots, which, there’s, again, no evidence that she ever wore those, but it’s absolutely something that she could have gone into a shop and purchased or had made for her. So, I just love the level of both design and research that’s been put into that show. It gives me so much to think about.

Caroline: Oh, awesome. Well, we’ll definitely include a link in the show notes if folks want to check that out as well. Okay. Well, before we wrap up this chat, we just want to reiterate how amazing your book is and let our listeners know that it’s an excellent resource for both beginner and more advanced sewists. Also, a New York Times bestseller, I need to add because… Congratulations!

Bernadette: Once again, how historical sewing got popular, I will never know. It’s…

Helen: It’s you. It’s because of you.

Caroline: But, yes. You cover pressing, smocking, sleeve gussets, pockets, darning, and so much more. It’s also beautifully photographed in natural light, which is something that we both love about your YouTube videos as well. The lighting is always stunning, so listeners, check out the book, Make, Sew, and Mend. It is awesome.

Bernadette: Oh, thank you.

Caroline: Okay, we had just a couple more questions before we wrap up with this chat. So you collabed with Clockwork Fairy to make your first pattern, and we were wondering if you could describe that for our listeners. It’s so cool

Bernadette: Oh, it’s been so exciting. It’s something that I had hoped to do for a long time because ultimately, especially with the projects that I draped or drafted myself or that I’ve translated out of Victorian books that are very dense to comprehend, I get people in the comments saying, oh, I would love a pattern from you about this, or, you know, I would never be able to understand these instructions and draft this for myself.

So, you know, offering patterns has been something that I would have loved to do, but I just, first of all, I didn’t have the time, but I also didn’t have the skill set because I didn’t want to put out a pattern that was just, here’s the original pattern I used, good luck scaling it to your size. But, you know, I would want to put out something that is accessible to beginners, that’s graded in a wide range of sizes, and I just, that is a whole, sort of, mathematical art form that I would have to develop skills for, which, again, I didn’t have the time to do.

So thankfully, Michelle and I have been following each other for many, many years. I adore her work and she’s been doing some really, really great digital pattern work and selling them on Etsy. And I thought here, like, this, this is what needs to happen. We just need to collab. I’ll, provide the design of the clothes, and she’ll list them in her shop, and it’s great because I feel like I could have gone to one of the big 4 pattern companies and said, would you want to work together?

But, in a way, I don’t trust them to understand the history and why I’m doing seams in certain places and the fact that there shouldn’t be ease in a corset because of reasons, very obvious reasons. You know, I’ve just seen them do some curious things with historical dress, to no fault of their own, they are modern pattern companies. And, you know, historical dress, isn’t what they do.

But what I love about Michelle’s work is she has done a ton of historical sewing herself. So she knows why seams are where they are. We have already released one pattern, and she was able to say, so in this resource, they actually have this additional, you know, see, a piece that goes around the sleeve. Do you want to add this for this pattern? I just, I was like, yeah, absolutely. Let’s do it.

You know, so she has other thoughts about the the history of of the original garments that she can also contribute to the pattern, and it just makes for an overall much better pattern, and I’m very, very proud to be able to release these and very, very honoured to be able to work with her.

Helen: Ooh, it sounds like a dream collaboration. You two sound very well matched, and the Darcy Top is available at the Clockwork Fairy Etsy shop, if anyone wants to check that out. Lots of beautiful corsetry to admire there as well. And we can’t wait to see what else you come up with. Will there be more patterns in your future?

Bernadette: Oh yes, we have so many plans.

Helen: Ooh.

Caroline: Ooh, yay.

Bernadette: The ultimate goal would be to release patterns with the videos in future. It depends, you know, I don’t want to suck up all of her time, but you know, it depends on how much time we all have. But that would be the goal, is to have patterns released with the videos as well as a backlog of things that we’ve already done.

Helen: Oh, wow. Okay. We can’t wait to see more from you and definitely go check out this pattern because it’s really neat. I’m sure it’d be a really fun sewing experience. And the other thing we wanted to ask you about, which is completely unrelated, like the most unrelated, is that, your guinea pigs.

Bernadette: Oh, thank god. I thought you were going to ask about ankles. That has happened on live radio. National radio.

Caroline: Oh, my gosh.

Helen: What about ankles should we be asking?

Bernadette: No, don’t.

Caroline: No, just go to the, your YouTube channel. Go to, go to Bernadette’s YouTube channel, and you’ll know.

Helen: It’s true, it’s right up there in the header. But we do love seeing your guinea pigs when they pop up in your videos and we did an episode recently about sewing for pets.

Bernadette: Oh, yes, I saw.

Helen: And we were wondering if you’ve ever thought about sewing costumes for your guinea pigs

Bernadette: I have thought about that. I’ve had actually a video on my list for about three years at this point. I wanted to do one of those, like, a parody on those 500 years of fashion videos, but, like, on a guinea pig.

Helen: Oh, my gosh,

Bernadette: And I have, I just have never got around to it. They’re so difficult to dress because they are just potatoes. They don’t even really have heads, so, like, you can’t put anything on their necks. And it’s just, like, it’s just a cylinder with legs. And how do you, how do you clothe that?

I did have my, my last boy was a lot more tolerant. I mean, he didn’t enjoy it but, you know, he was, he was, he was a good sport about it. He was, he was my little puppy. I have two girls now who are rescues who are very skittish, so they’re still young, so maybe they’ll grow out of it, but at the moment, I don’t want to put them under more stress than they can handle.

Helen: That’s fair. We did emphasise in our episode that you should only dress your pet up if they like it or if they seem to like it.

Bernadette: I think they’d look really cute in ruffs, but we’ll see. We’ll see.

Caroline: Maybe someday.

Bernadette: Yeah. Although, my sibling does do fantastic portraits every year. It’s become a running joke between us where they paint guinea pigs in historical dress. And so now I have these portraits all over my studio of guinea pigs…

Helen: I saw those.

Bernadette: … in royal dress. So if that’s, you know, if you’re interested in what a guinea pig looks like in a ruff, I do have many an example.

Caroline: Fabulous. Oh, well, thank you so much, Bernadette, for chatting with us today. Can you share with our listeners all the places they can find you online?

Bernadette: Oh, of course. It was such a great opportunity to chat with you as well. I’m on Instagram @BernadetteBanner. I do post there on occasion. I’m also on YouTube @Bernadette Banner. That’s just the channel name. I am more, you know, more on YouTube. I think that’s it.

Helen: Well, you do have these patterns now, which again are at The Clockwork Fairy. And amazing YouTube channel. Absolutely incredible. I’ve so enjoyed diving in and watching literally hours of your content. So this has been a dream getting a chance to chat with you. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Bernadette: Oh, well, thank you so much for having me. I have, likewise, you know, done my, my hours of digging into your podcast. Thank you for the entertainment.

Helen: Oh, of course. Have a great night.

Bernadette: Thank you. You too.

Caroline: Bye.

That’s it for today’s episode of Love to Sew. You can find me, Caroline, at Blackbird Fabrics and BF Patterns, and Helen at Helen’s Closet Patterns and Cedar Quilt Co. We’re recording in beautiful British Columbia, Canada.

Helen: You can support Love to Sew and get access to bonus content by subscribing on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. You even get access to the back catalogue of bonus episodes. That’s over 75 hours of Love to Sew. Go to patreon.com/LoveToSew or check out our podcast page on Apple Podcasts for more info.

Caroline: You can head to LoveToSewPodcast.com to find our show notes. They’re filled with links and pictures from this episode. And if you’d like to get in touch with us, leave us a message at 1-844-SEW-WHAT. That’s 1-844 739-9428. Or send us an email at hello@LoveToSewPodcast.com

Helen: Thanks to our amazing podcast team, Lisa Ruiz is our creative assistant. Jordan Moore of the PodCabin is our editor. And Margaret Wakelee is our transcriber. And thank you for listening. We’ll talk to you next week.

Caroline: Buh-bye.

Helen: Bye.

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