One of the best feelings we know is to receive a compliment on what we’re wearing and to respond with “THANKS, I MADE IT!”

There is a bit of alchemy involved when you bring your favorite fabrics together with beautiful embellishments to create a garment that expresses your personal style. It’s empowering to make choices ands to honor our bodies with a good fit. Garment making really helps us know ourselves, and wearing what we make is a personal statement of independence and creativity. We love to make our own clothes from our favorite fabrics, and feel more comfortable in our own skin as a result. We hope to share this joy with you through The Essentials Series garment patterns. These patterns are a collaboration between Karen LePage and Alison Glass.

The Essentials Series garment patterns are designed to gently guide you through building a wardrobe of pieces you love to make and wear every day. Sewing garments for yourself can be intimidating, but is ultimately incredibly rewarding. We aim to address the ever-growing, yet largely ignored population of sewists who have progressed beyond basics, but want to build their confidence with garment sewing. Each booklet starts with a Master pattern – a Dress – which we use to guide you through measuring and fitting your body. The patterns come in a wide range of sizes, initially designed to fit an hourglass shape. (Despite being held up as a standard, we are rarely offered nicely-fitting options in ready-to-wear!) Through the muslin-making process, we will help you achieve a good fit with the master patterns as a practice garment, no matter what your shape. After that, you will be able to sew all of the variations in each book with the confidence that they will fit the way you want.

Available in both woven and knit versions, The Essential Series garment patterns work together to help you create endless combinations to start your handmade wardrobe. Each pattern booklet includes 24 pages of inspirational photos, straightforward instructions, pull-out pattern pages, and embellishment ideas to help you personalize your handmade wardrobe. These patterns are written for the confident beginner to intermediate sewist, who has some knowledge of basic garment making and sewing vocabulary. We want you to feel beautiful and confident in your handmade clothes, and we wrote The Essentials Series garment patterns to help you get there.