50 People Who Decided To Make Their Own Dresses And It Was The Best Decision Ever

To find out more about what it takes to create a perfect handmade dress as well as the art of sewing, Bored Panda reached out to Demi, a creator who specializes in retro sewing and who has been doing so for about a decade now. “I lean heavily on Google and internet blogs for sewing skills, as well as patternmaking books in the latter half of my career,” Demi told us.

She quit her job in health insurance to start live-streaming sewing projects because that was her true passion in life. “Now I have side gigs at a local fabric store and also teaching children how to sew, so my entire life revolves around this hobby!”

Having sewn for a decade now, we asked Demi how her skills and designs have changed over time. “I think the major change was starting to worry about how nice the smaller details that people don’t notice looked. I also guess I started with pre-made sewing patterns and while I still do use them on occasion, it’s faster and easier now for me to just draft something for myself that is unique, nobody else in the world has another one of those things, and it fits without adjustments,” the creator explained.

Being in crafty circles for a long time, Demi argues that DIY fashion is a lot more popular these days than it used to be. “Especially when people have been more educated about fashion sustainability and some no longer wish to support fast fashion. Some turn to thrift shops and some turn to the craft side!” Demi’s only tip for any creative hobby, really, is to be more tenacious. “Do the work, look things up, don’t be scared of anything. That’s what Google and test runs are for.” The creator argues that there’s no magic trick or technique involved in starting from nothing and ending up with a beautiful dress.

“The only thing that prevents people from succeeding in this hobby is needing constant help and guidance from others without trying things out themselves first. When I start a project, I look at all the pain points of the project, all the skills I need, and I spend a long time researching different techniques and figuring out if I can do things better or smarter than how I’ve been doing them. That’s me, anyways,” Demi concluded.

We also asked Demi what it takes to make this beautiful dress she made for St Patrick’s Day. “To make a dress like this, you need a damn well-fitting basic bodice pattern and ability to think in 3D to transform photos that you see online to lines on paper and then to fabric,” the creator said.She added that there’s nothing original under the sun. “A lot of my designs are copied from vintage dresses from the '50s and '60s, this one included!”

Bored Panda also spoke with Kyoko Caulfield, an NYC-based artist who went viral after sharing this jaw-dropping kimono they made on Reddit with the caption “I am half Scottish and half Japanese- I hand-sewed this kimono from men's dress shirts and boxer shorts.”

Kyoko told us that their love for sewing started with making Halloween costumes as a child. “Every year, my dad and I would go to the fabric store and flip through the pattern booklets until I saw something I liked, and then we would spend a month or so sewing it together. It was a great bonding experience, and from there I started making my own clothes for everyday wear (although sometimes they still look like Halloween costumes).” Today, Kyoko works across a variety of artistic mediums, and you can follow their creations on social media here, here and here.

“The concept behind this kimono was to create a textile piece that visually represented my somewhat unusual mixed-race heritage of being Scottish and Japanese. Like many mixed-race people, I often struggled to reconcile the two halves of my cultural identity growing up, but eventually reached a place where I felt I could celebrate it,” Kyoko told us when we asked about the idea behind this kimono.

Kyoko said they chose to use men’s shirts and boxer shorts to represent Scottish tartans and a kimono silhouette for the overall vessel.

“From there I hand-sewed all the pieces together. A lot of aspects of this piece were born out of a lack of resources; I used men’s shirts because I couldn’t afford to order swatches of real clan tartans, and I hand-stitched them together because I didn’t have access to a sewing machine at the time.”

The artist believes that in the end, all these obstacles made the piece stronger. “They forced me to think outside the box and invest more of myself into the garment.”

Kyoko believes that if you have the time, interest, and ability, you should absolutely handmake at least one clothing item for yourself. “No matter how it turns out, the care and effort that you put into it will make it a special piece in your wardrobe that you’ll always come back to.”

“Sewing is a skill that has a very low barrier to entry because, in the end, all you need is an idea, some fabric, a needle, and some thread. Besides utilizing the help of my family members, I am mostly self-taught, so I would recommend utilizing all of the free resources available to you on the internet via sewing blogs and YouTube,” the artist concluded.