Illustrated Guide to Advanced Dressmaking & Alteration: Learn to Make & Alter Dresses, Skirts, Shirts, Slacks. Add Pockets, Frills, Buttons, Zippers & So Much More - Over 180 Images & Illustrations

The ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO ADVANCED DRESSMAKING AND ALTERATION: LEARN TO MAKE AND ALTER DRESSES, SKIRTS, SHIRTS, AND SLACKS. ADD POCKETS, FRILLS, BUTTONS, ZIPPERS AND SO MUCH MORE by Catherine Morris is a wonderful, step-by-step and clearly-defined guide where the author takes on “different types of common garment components.” Catherine Morris, the author, provides us with over 180 illustrations mirroring the steps, some drawn, some bright photos, the best, for me, my most favorite, being the drawn examples that are colorful. These especially bring back my memories of doing simple sewing in 4-H and my mother doing complicated sewing, making beautiful clothes for her daughters. The colorful, drawn illustrations are inspiring in that way. The author tells us she will focus on the garment components as a base so that one can alter these aspects to be more creative. This process means you won’t have to reinvent the wheel each time you sew a garment. There’s a handy and detailed glossary with definitions and illustrations that are very colorful too. The author also is helpful because she works up to showing and explaining the most complex and difficult aspects of the components or, simply, the most difficult components themselves, so the reader, if following her lead and learning each step, can take on the simplest component and work her way to the most complicated. Following these steps, she offers the reader a chance for her confidence to grow. If completing the tasks, the reader can take on the author’s last step: showing us how to make alterations! And just before that, she shows us how to use each kind of closure, from snaps to a myriad of buttons to zipped closures to the hook and bar, the hook and loop, and Velcro that she says can help those with disabilities. This discussion of closures seems the most fun to me because it offers all kinds of ways to be creative. Another example of what delighted me is how she shows the reader the progression of learning to make one dart and build to stacking darts to make pleats for a smocked fabric!

A lot of information in a short space. It would not make you a complete professional by just reading the book, but it does have a lot of information. The illustrations are not great but they do help. My suggestion would be to get some one who knows how to sew to help.

Product is a complete disappointment. Not worry $12. Clothes look terrible. Didn’t learn anything new. Is a refund available.

As a person who has sewed for years, I was looking for a book to help me with some very advanced techniques. This book is organized very well and the pictures are helpful. I would say that this book would be wonderful for an average person who has mastered basic sewing techniques and wants to become more advanced. I discovered, however, that my skills were beyond this book and so I returned it (which was super easy). If you have done any kind of alterations, this book is probably not for you. If you are a basic or beginner and want to accrue more advanced techniques, this book would be of help to you.

There is some good basic information here (types of sleeves, necklines, instructions for shirring and gathering), but it's presented very superficially ( while basic processes are described, there is no attention to what could go wrong and how to avoid it, alternate approaches--only one gathering method, for example--or how to judge the final outcome).Some of the techniques are also just plain bad practice. For example, they have you drafting a sleeve that is perfectly symmetrical, when sleeve caps generally fit better with a shaped front and back. Worse, in the alteration section, they have you insert that sleeve with no attempt at harmonizing the shape of the cap with the shape of the existing armscye.This book is too simplistic for the intermediate sewer and likely to lead a beginner astray. There are better intros to sewing out there.

I really do like everything about this book it is very detailed and helpful to the beginner learning to so as well as a reference book to those who are experienced sewers

Excellent quality! Easy to understand! Pictures have nice view of detail! Perfect for beginners!

Clearly not a professional writer, seems put together by a middle schooler. Only beneficial for a complete beginner to sewing.