Are you past the beginner stage in sewing—maybe even past the intermediate stage—and still looking for ways to improve your skills, books that can teach you new techniques? There’s always more to learn, and they’ll never be a time when you’re so up on sewing knowledge that you can’t sprawl out on the couch with a good book and learn something.
The only problem, as you get more and more advanced, is that good books become few and far between. There are a thousand books for the first-stitch sewer; and hundreds more for the intermediate-beginner. But not so many people seem interested in writing books on advanced sewing technique, and of the books that are written, many are obscure, difficult to understand, or simply useless.
But if good advanced sewing books are few and far between they do exist, and the good ones really are good. Your favorites will depend on your particular specialty and where your interests lie; but here are three titles that have the potential to make a big contribution to any advanced sewer’s library and personal knowledge.
Best Sewing Books for Experienced Sewers:
The Art of Manipulating Fabric is a guidebook of the first degree. No, this isn’t straight sewing; but Colette Wolff provides an engaging, understandable, and extremely informative discussion about every way you ever knew to manipulate fabric—and then a whole lot more. It’s a book full of ideas, but it’s more than ideas; it’s also an encyclopedia of techniques and very understandable how-tos. And at the same time, it’s a comprehensive history of sewing. All this in 312 well-illustrated pages.
If you’re more into tailoring and would like to learn haute coutre techniques, Claire Shaeffer’s Coutre Sewing Techniques is the classic in the field. This is not a handbook for beginners, but for sewing enthusiasts who want to progress from making what looks handmade and perhaps cute to beautifully tailored pieces that look absolutely stunning. The book is clear and the explanations to the point and comprehensive; the book is well laid out, and the illustrations are good. It’s another of those books that contain far more information than you’d think could be fit between the covers: this is a dense read, but you’ll find yourself going back to it again and again for more information.
What about if you just want to learn how to make your own clothes patterns? Then Donald McCunn’s How to Make Sewing Patterns just might be for you. This is an old book—published in 1977—so the example styles are out of date and the pictures are basic black and white line drawings; but the information in this book is timeless. Donald walks you through everything you need to know to make tailored, perfectly-fitting patterns for you or anyone else. It teaches you how to work completely from scratch, but finish with professional patterns that you can be proud of.
There you have it—three advanced sewing books that will be an asset to any sewing aficionado’s library. No, they don’t have it all, but each of these books is a treasure trove of information that can give an advanced sewer countless hours of learning and hundreds of new techniques.