 SEW WHAT: Tween designers Emma Lewis, Emily Pile and Blair Sullivan show off the dresses they designed and made with the help of Dilys Tong at Sew Be It Studio.
Soooo . . . maybe I’ve exaggerated. A gal with more stray buttons scattered throughout her apartment than affixed to coats, I’d rather staple trailing hems than sew them any day.
But there’s hope for droopy-hemmed, button-challenged people like me at <strong>Sew Be It Studio</strong>, a warm, fuzzy and inspiring workshop space for sewing machine-phobic folk and aspiring fashion designers alike.
Presided over by costume designer Dilys Tong, the studio offers a range of sewing classes like teen fashion design and knitting, among others.
I pop in one November afternoon and meet Dilys and a crew of tweens anxious to model their latest fashiony creations. Fourteen-year-olds Emma Lewis, Emily Pile and Blair Sullivan have been taught the ropes (or threads?) by Dilys, who they affectionately call “Dil” or “Dilly”. They’ve taken her March break camps over the years and have made everything from boxing shorts and handbags to funky swing tops.
Today they’re showing off some darling dresses they’ve put together in only a day or so (a time frame this sewing virgin can’t imagine). They tell me they love fashion and find the sewing fun. The only annoying part, they agree, is cutting the pattern or making a mistake.
One of the gals is wearing her dress to a father-daughter dance at her school and another is thinking of wearing it to her confirmation. The last isn’t sure, but she seems confident she’ll get some use out of it soon.
After a whirlwind of questions and photos, the girls are outta there, knapsacks and cellphones in tow, on to the next venture: a rehearsal for a play, I learn.
Sitting around one of two large worktables, Dilys tells me she wanted Sew Be It to be different when she opened it three years ago. That meant no granny tops or doilies like at some do-it-yourself studios out there, she says.
The lower level studio is a place where people can make their own clothes and accessories without having to enroll in fashion design school, she elaborates.
Though most of the small, six-person classes are made up of women, there are some men. She doesn’t believe in segregating them, she says.
Which invariably means some male sewers are subject to PMS talk, poor laddies. No matter, they get their revenge. One man, Dilys says, took a beginner sewing class so he could learn to make outfits for his doggie. According to Dilys, his wife was right PO’d when he refused to hem her pants.
I hem and haw when Dilys says sewing is like the new yoga. It takes the stress away, she claims, and has a Zen-like feel to it as you focus on the task and get into the rhythm of the sewing machine.
But my skepticism falls away like a dangling button as Julie Andrews trills her way into my head. With “Sew, a needle pulling thread” threading its way through my brain, I imagine the whir of the machine being quite lulling after all.
Until you sew over your finger, that is.
A-hem.
Dilys isn’t sugar-coating things. Mistakes will be made. She tells newbies to remember their first day driving a car and then prepare themselves for a similar situation sewing.
You’ll eventually get there, she says, even though you’ll still be making the mistakes. The diff between a pro and a first-timer, she says, is that one knows how to cover up a mistake and the other doesn’t.
Dilys herself is an exercise in DIY magic. She tells me she couldn’t sew a button when she first started (my heart warms to her even more) and in her first class she sewed her skirt to whatever she was trying to make.
Horrified with the economics program she was in at university — an image of her future self working in a tiny bank cubicle jolted her into what sounds like a life-changing panic attack — she switched to fashion design. She was the only one in her first-year class who couldn’t sew. It took her almost three years to get the hang of it, she says.
Today she’s got an impressive list of sewing and design accomplishments, including making costumes for The Lion King right out of school, designing the new uniforms at the uber-trendy Drake Hotel, and creating costumes for So You Think You Can Dance?
Dilys doesn’t put on sewing airs. Brutally funny and honest, she’ll have you in stitches as she’s teaching you how to master them. No wonder the girls seem to look up to her like some sewing demigoddess.
And even as you’re going through the throes of beginner-crafter’s hell, there’s a feel-good component built into those early days when your confidence may be lagging like that droopy hem you’re trying to master.
Students learn to make a doggie (or kitty) bed stuffed with scrap material, which are all donated to the Toronto Humane Society. Betty, the resident doggie mascot and a former stray, isn’t just a testament to Dilys’s love of animals. She’s also a willing model for all the cute doggie designs her mommy makes for her.
I’m feeling better about the whole sewing thing now. The Vintage Re-Vamp class, where you learn to make those out-of-date vintage duds look sassy again, could be just the right fit for this manic thrift shopper.
Five-week sewing classes start at $225.
<em>2156 Yonge St., 416-481-7784 www.sewbeitstudio.com.</em>
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