PurSEWing Their Dreams: East students share their craft for creating their own clothing

Annabelle Reda:

Then-eighth-grader Annabelle Reda spent her quarantine behind the sewing machine. Starting off with a costume for the local Renaissance festival, her love for making clothes has only grown. 

Now-junior Reda started making costume-like clothing as a fun hobby and spent her free time creating all kinds of skirts and blouses that could be used in different costumes in the Renaissance fair. She also works at the Nelson on the teen council helping to run the teen events, allowing her to view paintings and art that portray clothing and styles that are very unique in the modern day.

“I enjoy doing costume stuff more because there’s something about it that makes it a little more fun,” Reda said. “You can’t wear it everyday, it’s unusual.”

While keeping a lot of yarn for knitting and crocheting, she also uses materials such as satin and chiffon. A lot of her materials come from Scraps KC — a craft reuse center — as it’s cheaper than buying fabric and better for the environment.

When she’s not making pieces for herself, she makes things for her sisters and does thrift flips for friends. She’s also helping to make the fairy costumes for senior Grace Fields’ upcoming musical, “Reverie.” The costumes are a romantic style and ballet inspired and are being made with satin, tulle skirts, chiffon, lace and lots of texture so that they stand out to the audience when watching the people on stage. 

“You want [people] to be able to look at [a costume] and see all the details even from so far away,” Reda said.

One of her favorite pieces she’s designed so far is a 1920’s-inspired green dress for a ball at the Nelson that she made in four hours the night before.

“It turned out really nice,” Reda said. “It was really unique and I haven’t really made anything that fast.”

Marin Bryant:

In her eighth grade sewing class, senior Marin Bryant spent her time at the sewing machine working hard on her first project.

A little 20-by-26-inch pillowcase sparked something Bryant didn’t know she had in her: an urge to create. She wiped off the dust on the dull white sewing machine at her house a couple weeks later and got started.

“I have the resources, so why not?” Bryant said.

While the class taught Bryant the basics, she often relies on her own DIY skills or her grandmother’s advice for help when she’s stuck.

After practicing by making small bags, pajama pants, pillow cases and scrunchies, Bryant took on her biggest project so far — crafting her own Sweetheart dress. Using Joann’s turquoise fabric and thread, Bryant is re-teaching herself how to work with a pattern since she normally creates her dresses from scratch.

“I’m relearning things I’ve forgotten since I haven’t used patterns since eighth grade,” Bryant said. 

Normally her projects are smaller, altering old clothes or thrift flips. She’ll shop at City Thrift, Savers or Salvation Army, looking for different pieces to upcycle.

“I will go to the thrift store and buy something purely because I think I can alter it,” Bryant said. 

Most of Bryant’s projects include cropping pieces of halter tank tops — grabbing inspiration from Depop or Pinterest.

“I like to shop on Depop to see cool clothing and see what I could change or what I can learn from the pieces on there,” Bryant said.

Abby Stein:

Senior Abby Stein started sewing at the age of seven — for her dolls, of course. After making dresses for her American Girl dolls, Stein got a sewing machine for more life-sized projects.

“Eventually the amount of clothes I was hand sewing convinced my parents to get me a sewing machine,” Stein said. 

Stein took a Joann’s sewing class in fourth grade and built on the basics using pattern books and apps such as TikTok and YouTube to get more tutorials and tips.

Stein has an eye for fashion — whether it’s a dress in the thrift store that has serious potential for altering or an expensive piece online that she could recreate for hundreds of dollars less. She often goes to thrift stores such as Blessings Abound and Savers to find things for her pieces when she wants a break from the hard work of sewing clothing pieces from scratch.

“I do like to upcycle clothes to be able to alter them,” Stein said. “It just makes thrifting a lot more of a creative process.”

Stein also likes to look out for cheaper fabrics at thrift stores and second-hand websites, such as Fab Scrap, since it can be expensive to buy fabric frequently, and even uses her creativity to see clothing pieces in other fabrics like a bedspread. 

“It really just depends on the piece I’m needing to make,” Stein said. “So like when I buy something at a thrift store, I’ll have it and then I’ll see a project and be like, ‘Oh, that’s perfect for that.’”

According to Stein, she can easily spend a lot of time working on different projects. Long processes like hand sewing allow her to appreciate the people who work in manufacturing and make clothes by hand all the time.

“You start to appreciate how hard it is to actually make clothes,” Stein said. “Most clothing production is not automated, like manufacturing still happens by hand.”

While she enjoys making pieces, she says they can take hours, days or even longer. One of her biggest projects was a fringe dress that took around four months to complete.

“My advice to anyone who wants to sew is that it’s hard and frustrating,” Stein said. “I think people make it look easy but you’re going to get frustrated. But don’t let that burn you out.”