Disclaimer: Please excuse the potato quality of most of the photos in this article: they were taken on a phone that was not coping well with the heat of these super hot days we are having here in the UK right now!
Image description: A finished cutsew fashioned before the workshop, and an unaltered t-shirt featuring the artwork of Ai Yazawa.
This month's Bay Area Kei Bibliotheca theme was DIY July, and we knew we'd have something to say about this one! We've been excited for weeks about hosting an Otome Sewing Bee workshop this month on upcycling basic t-shirts into cutsews! As a sustainable fashion brand, R.R.Memorandum believes it is of paramount importance that we are able to do our bit to educate our supporters about ways in which it is possible to be sustainable with fashion consumption. In that vein, we were extremely delighted to host such a workshop!
Oversized t-shirt at the ready (with Ai Yazawa's Nana featured on it), and a cutsew example she'd made earlier, our designer Katherine set to work, perhaps a dozen or more participants following along with her instruction over zoom.
Imagine descriptions: Katherine preparing the main shape of the cutsew pre-sewing.
Firstly preparing the cutsew for sewing, Katherine drew a rough outline of the garment shape she wanted to achieve on the unaltered t-shirt, and then cut around this with a bit of sewing-allowance.
Next, using the overlocker and hemming stitches, Katherine created the ribbing around the neckline of the garment. These gave the final piece the notion of being created to be worn as a casual lolita garment: which is, after all, the entire aim of the workshop! Katherine also created a puff sleeve effect using gathering and elastic.
