The entire Sewing Connection Series is now available on our website! In Kindle for your tablet or Print! Your purchase also helps support the Youtube program!
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New Videos Launching Every Week on Youtube
Series 6 Shirley Adams Sewing Connection
Sewing Connection Series 6 available December 15th!
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Refabrications: Don’t limit yourself to fashion fabrics only, explore exciting possibilities offered in upholstery shops! Shirley demonstrates the use of straight line quilting to turn a wild curtain fabric into an elegant fitted jacket. Edge piping and closures, too.
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Targeting Darts: Darts allow you to achieve the elegance of fitted shaping in your personal style. Shirley takes the mystery out of altering your patterns.
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Lace: Handmade or machine woven, lace often gets overlooked as it requires special consideration in handling and application. Consider it an opportunity to shine in your fashion design and plan carefully before cutting into your delicate fabrics.
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Irregular Matching: You bring home a plaid and discover it is not the same left to right? The spacing is offset and the colors seem to have lost their shine since leaving the store? Do Not Panic! Let Shirley walk you through the process of matching those irregular patterns.
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Sequin Sequence: Sequins require extra planning, but they are too fun to avoid, whether a glitzy evening out or vacation fun, do not miss out on these gems!
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Deck Déc in a Sec: Don’t neglect your outdoor living space. Spruce it up for entertaining or for quiet evenings at home. Update your deck as an extension of your distinctive style, even in the great outdoors. Table cloth, basket of napkins, place mats.
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Fringe Benefits: Fringe can be a nightmare, but with proper stabilization, it can lend a fun and flirty edge to your fabric. Deploy your fringe for something elegant as well.
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Designer Pattern Changes: Sandra Betzina, creator of Power Sewing, joins Shirley to demonstrate adding walking ease, creating the A-line skirt, and cures back-riding should seams.
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Luxurious Linings: Professionally designed jackets and coats finish with a silky lining that provides ease when slipping on and off, but those linings also cover construction details that might not be so pretty. Lining that jacket is not as difficult as it seems.
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Zipper Pockets: Not all zippers need be hidden. Exposed zippers add fun to children’s clothing as well as provide pockets to carry treasures. Alligator, Humpty Dumpty, a kangaroo, and a whale demonstrated. Consider functional storage bags for travel.
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Patternless Coat: Leftover silk-rayon in a plaid pattern became this Patternless Coat. As the name tells us, this coat has no fixed pattern, but the variations are endless.
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Whoops! Pull success from mistakes with creativity and style. Not enough fabric? Simple design alterations save your project. Sleeve cap too flat? Collar too low? Let Shirley help you through these mini disasters.
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Denim Dandies: Denim goes upscale and elegant! Metallic silver thread and cut-work adorn a fitted jacket for a fantastic evening outfit. Add trousers or a skirt.
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Pattern for Series 5
Go to the Download Lessons page and print Shirley’s stunning Cascade Ruffle Closure blouse pattern to create this look!
Shirley Adams Sewing Connection Series 5 will be available in print and ebook November 8. Visit her author page for other work.
November 01 at 4pm EST
Join Shirley on her youtube channel to discover the joy of Setting Boundaries!
Designer adaptations of borders provide a professional finish and a lovely frame for your face. Recreate expensive details seen only in expensive boutiques.
Sewing Connection Series 5
Shirley Adams Sewing Connection Series 5 will be available in print and ebook November 8. Visit her author page for other work.
Join Shirley as she brings you new techniques and ideas to elevate your sewing from great to excellent!
- Setting Boundaries: Designer adaptations of borders provide a professional finish and a lovely frame for your face.
- Sueded Silk and Microfibers: Luxury requires special consideration in choice of pattern and purpose
- Shawl Collars: A shawl collar is equally appropriate on a blouse, dress, suit, or coat
- Testing 1, 2, 3: Invest time creating test patterns before cutting into expensive fabrics. It will save your time and your money. Address fitting problems as well as pattern matching concerns.
- Embellishing The Truth: Fix ugly fabric with style and creativity
- Love To Sew With My Feet: Jan Saunders joins Shirley to demonstrate the versatility of your sewing machine’s presser feet.
- Terrific Tubes: Fabric tubes offer endless fun and creativity, whether to cover a headband, add style to a simple jacket, create new fabric to show off as a bag or blouse.
- See It, Sew It: Anything you see, you can sew! Gather ideas from ready to wear and transform a simple pattern into the latest fashion
- See It Again: Alter an existing pattern to create anything you see in expensive ready to wear.
- Home Décor Camouflage: Create screen panels using sheets that match your bedding, shoulder protection for garment storage, lamp shades, and camouflage a box as an occasional table.
- Wearing Home Décor: Don’t overlook home decor stores as fabrics and textures abound as well as colors and patterns. Create fun and decorative kid’s rompers.
- Baker’s Dozen: Shirley answers viewer mail with a multitude of professional sewing techniques from smooth shoulder caps to buttonholes to hemming knit fabrics..
- It’s In The Bag: With any type fabric, bags provide opportunity for self expression. Easy to make hobo bag and shoulder bag look expensive, but only you will know the secret..
Sewing Connection Lessons
October 22 at 4pm EST, join Shirley as she welcomes the First Lady of Faux Fur, Donna Salyers. Create stunning animal friendly fashion from these incredible fabrics. Acrylic fibers knitted into a polyester backing, thick and warm, yet lightweight and NO shedding!
Free to watch on youtube
Sewing Connection Series 4 – Ebook or Print
Available on October 4, prepare to follow your favorite programs with the Ebook or Workbook of Series 4 or the print edition! Programs available free on Shirley Adams Sewing Connection Channel on YouTube.
Ultimate Ultra: Faux suedes and leathers have come a long way since the horrible era of plastics. These fabrics are now produced as microfibers, providing excellent handling, just like regular fabric. While not inexpensive, learn to handle these new miracle fabrics to maximize every penny.
Bound Buttonholes and Pockets: Never out of style, but out of the range of manufacturer’s cost in ready-to-wear purchases. Create that elegant touch because you can make it yourself.
Give Me Liberty: You have the freedom to alter any commercial pattern to suit your style.
Head Start Child’s Room: Decorate a child’s room.
Fabulous Fur: Create stunning fashion with the first lady of Faux Fur!
Correct Collaring: Establish roll line; tape lapel; stitch notch area; pressing and finishing.
Neat Knit Necks: Knit ribbing provides a professional finish for some woven fabrics, but not all.
Not Enough Fabric: Don’t panic, use techniques the professionals use to save your project.
Open Arm Welcome: Enlarge your sleeves in any of several ways while maintaining your style.
The New Acrylics: Take a fresh look at new acrylics.
Myriad Miracles: Simple alterations make your commercial pattern fit properly.
Star Spangled Celebration: Translate a patriotic theme tastefully onto fashion and fashion accessories.
It’s only August, but …
Start planning for Interwoven Expressions in Chesterton, Indiana, now. Fiber artists of extraordinary talent convene for one day only.
A light has left our world
It is with infinite sadness to announce that Shirley Adams has passed away. Her gifts brought us great joy, and the industry a vehicle for the art of dressing well.
Shirley battled lymphoma since October of 2019. Ultimately the disease won, but not without a fight. Shirley was able to enjoy her “fourth” retirement which included gardening, her grandchildren, and Gallery on the Square.
If you have stories and memories, please share them. Shirley touched so many lives. I know she has gone to her Lord in peace, but we mourn her passing away from us.
Please visit https://www.lls.org/ for more information on this insidious killer. I must publicly thank Johnson and Johnson pharmaceuticals for their potent weapon that provided family and friends more quality time with Shirley. She doted on her kids, her grandkids, and was to be a great grandmother this October.
Shirley follows her husband, whom we lost in 2016. Shirl and Tut were glamorous and loving, devoted to each other, and generous to a fault. They built The Sewing Connection together, ran it together, “retired” it together! Three times! She is at peace and no longer in pain, safe in the loving arms of our Lord.
I will begin posting information again shortly. I, your humble admin, had the honor of being with Shirley these last several months, allowing her freedoms the stupid disease kept trying to take away, but I sadly neglected the “business” end of The Sewing Connection.
It was for all of you she started this crazy thing thirty years ago. There weren’t any programs promoting couture sewing, the “art of dressing well” kind of sewing. Her kids thought her mad, but her husband said “What the hell, let’s give it a try.” I’d say they did one heck of a good job.
