Hey y’all – today I’m sharing my thoughts about my friend Joi’s new book, Designer Joi’s Fashion Sewing Workshop (affiliate link). I received a copy of this book from the publisher, but as always, all the opinions in this post are my own. If you’ve read my review of Joi’s first book, you can tell that Joi knows her stuff and has a wealth of knowledge to share.
One of the major reasons I love sewing is that I can imagine a piece of clothing and I have the skills to turn that imaginary design into a garment that can actually be worn. If that idea has you saying, “I want to be able to do that!” read on.
Fashion Sewing Workshop (affiliate link) is a book I imagine would be a great textbook for an intro to fashion design class. If you’re not a designer, you might have an idea of what that entails from watching things like Project Runway, but maybe not a plan of how you would go about learning the process or which areas you might need more information in. This book gets you started in the right direction. There are chapters ranging from drawing designs to flat patterning to draping to computer aided pattern drafting and beyond. Now each of these topics could be a book in themselves, and in fact you can find books on each of those subjects alone. I don’t think this book is meant to make you an expert in each area, but to give you a good foundation.
There are exercises in each chapter to help you test your skill set as you go, and the way this book is arranged you’ll get to dabble in just about everything. For under $30, that’s a great value to decide if you want to study any of these areas further.
So if you’re interested in getting your feet wet with fashion design, check out Designer Joi’s Fashion Sewing Workshop (affiliate link).
HW
I loved Joi’s first book and the clear explanations and attention to detail, but was disappointed in this one. I felt that I needed a lot more pictures and found some explanations confusing. While I did learn a lot, I also was confused a lot.
Melissa Mora
I agree that some areas could be confusing. As I said in my review, this book is a good overview, but for any one of these subjects to be mastered, there’s definitely going to have to be more study in books on just that subject.