“I love to inspire…
I love to encourage creativity and to share the techniques, design ideas and inspiration that I use to build a truly unique style...”
Hi! I’m Diane. Living in the UK, I was born and raised in the West Midlands area where I live with my husband, teenage son and my cat/sewing room helper called Molly (my previous cat was Bilbo).
I come from an artsy family. I got my love of drawing, painting and photography from my dad as I was growing up….and on my mum’s side of the family, going back as far as her grans and great grans, there are knitters, sewers and milliners. My mum has always sewn, crocheted and knitted but it’s her long-lasting love of sewing that has become my passion too.
I learned to sew from a very young age as I watched mum sew her own clothes and sew for others too. Some early memories are of me standing and holding a box of pins and passing them to her as she fitted clients.
I started off by sewing dolls’ clothes then moved on to basic skirts and tops for myself. My first proper big make was when I was 15. It was a hacking jacket made from a lovely pure wool dogstooth check. It was a Vogue pattern and mum helped and guided me through the whole process. I was so proud of it….damn, I wish I had kept it!
Ever since those first makes the sewing bug has stayed with me. For quite some time I followed in mum’s footsteps and I worked for others, either making from scratch or altering and remodelling RTW. It’s been a fantastic experience to learn how to fit so many different shapes and sizes of women. During busy times, however, I couldn’t sew much for myself and several years back (coinciding with my son growing up) I decided to cut back on work so that I could make more for myself. I started to hone my style and work out what I liked to wear and make. I’m now at a place where almost all of my wardrobe is memade and it feels great!
Fashion and style have always interested me and are even more of a passion now. With my desire to learn more about designing and pattern adapting, I took a short correspondence course in pattern cutting and design 8 years ago. I thoroughly enjoyed the course and it resulted in a diploma. Whilst the pattern-making/cutting method I learned wasn’t a widely used one, and I’ve forgotten a lot of the complicated maths techniques involved, the pattern manipulation techniques have stood me in good stead, making me confident at changing patterns around to get the look that I want and to emulate the designer looks that inspire me so much…..
Moving on…and 2016 was the year I discovered the Instagram sewing community. I also found more and more sewing blogs that I enjoyed reading. Later that year I began to realise that I really wanted to have a go at starting a sewing blog myself, so in January of 2017 “Dream Cut Sew” was born….
On my blog, I document my sewing projects and share any special techniques that I use to create my unique makes and also I aim to inspire you with many trends, styles, colours and designer detail posts.
The makes that I’ll show you? Well, my style is a little eclectic with a solid base of classics to ground it. I love mixing modern trends with classic items and to put my creative spin on my more basic pieces too. I’m not really into fit and flare dresses, florals or much in the way of vintage looks. If there is any vintage it’s more likely to be the 60s, 70s or 80s and always with a modern twist or a touch of classic mixed with it. I use quite a lot of plain fabrics, some textures, and more recently some bolder patterns. My favourite fabrics to sew are wool, cotton and linen. I sew quite a lot of knits and love a great coating fabric.
I hope you’ll follow along with me as I show you my creations and share my love of sewing and style.
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Need to get in touch? EMAIL: dianegblog@gmail.com