Malotke Sews

This week's book review is on a book that one of my good friend's just surprised me with recently! It's "The Complete Book of Sewing: Dressmaking and Sewing for the Home Made Easy" by Constance Talbot, edited by Isabelle Stevenson, and published in 1949. I have a small assortment of vintage sewing books that I started collecting in college. I knew that for our senior year we would have a table to display our portfolios, other work, and decorate however we pleased, in addition to our senior collections. Pretty much from my freshman year on I had a general idea of the theme and color scheme for my senior collection. One of my ideas for my table was to use vintage books as props to add varying heights to display photos and other apparel works (such as the corset I made while attending the London College of Fashion).  This lovely book has loads of chapters with everything from picking the right fabrics to how to baste to time-saving details and pockets. Each chapter h...

Today's book review is on Valerie Steele's " The Corset: A Cultural History ." When I studied abroad my Junior year of college I attended the London College of Fashion (LCF) for a semester. How they operate their study abroad semesters is that you take 3 required classes and then you get x amount of hours to choose other classes. For my three classes I elected to take Shoe Design, Millinery, and Corsetry. A big part of my corsetry class was keeping a sketch book / research book. Well, if there's one thing I love it's research. My corsetry book was full of notes and images (See image below)! My sketching isn't the best but man oh man can I research. I loved LCF's library, Purdue had basically no fashion books available and LCF was filled with any topic you could want to look into. I spent a lot of my free time in the library reading books, collecting images, typing notes, and making wish lists of books I would want to purchase for my own home library. I...