School of Family Life

yup, that's going to be the answer to the vest woes! so i found some patterns. i ordered them and they looked pretty good. well, looks can be deceiving. actually, the patterns are just fine, i'm sure. if you happen to already know the tips, tricks, and techniques involved in sewing welt pockets and notched collars! if you don't, do not look to a Simplicity pattern for illumination. and trust me, there are tips, tricks, and techniques that you will fail miserably without.

enter brigham young university. i am so not kidding. there is an amazing sewing tutorial series available on their website. clearly it's for a class - or rather, a whole bunch of classes - but the techniques are unbelievably well demonstrated so no syllabus or anything is needed. the first few seconds of my experience had me convinced i was not going to be able to listen to the instructor, who at first sounds like she's either begun to seriously loathe her life or else seriously loathe yours. and then you realize that she's just into sewing and is explaining everything as though it's as obvious as how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. but not in a condescending way, just in an "i do this every day of my life" way. which is kinda what you want in an instructor. plus they never show her face, which i love.

and she has an entire tutorial on... da-da-DA!... THE NOTCHED COLLAR! now, i did not have any idea that this was an incredibly difficult thing to do. on my third failed attempt, i was beginning to suspect that there was something i might not be getting from the pattern instructions. enter faithful google search (i'm now convinced we would not be able to get married without google). any idea how many sewing "instruction" pages there are out there either without illustration or with strange fuzzy pictures and mysterious alien symbols that only someone better at sewing than you would ever be able to decipher, thereby defeating the whole purpose of illustrating a tutorial? i was beginning to despair until the nameless, faceless wonder that is the brigham young sewing instructor entered my life. go figure.

now, i don't imagine that you're going to sit down and watch a two hour notched collar tutorial, but if you ever even want to go back to the basics and learn why your pins should be perpendicular to your cut line instead of parallel with it, a super cool technique for marking dart lines called "tailor's tacks" and other pattern marking transfer methods, or what the hell the point of stay-stitching is, i'd recommend checking it out. And if you ever get around to the notched collars, i have two words for you: The Dot. and if that doesn't mean anything, get thee to the School of Family Life before you make a single cut!