SewVeraVenus

VV About

Behind VeraVenus™ is a designer & costumier with over 30 years of pattern designing and sewing experience coupled with a life long love of 30′s, 40′s & 50′s clothes.

The SewVeraVenus blog is my take on vintage-style dressmaking through personal projects. I’ll be posting a few tutorials on pattern drafting and sewing, the occasional free pattern and lots of inspiration.

The aim is to share and encourage the pleasure of making beautiful things.

Jean Harlow, Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers have always been my style muses. As soon as I was old enough to buy my own clothes I headed straight to the vintage clothing shops of Manhattans East Village and Upper West Side. My interest in sewing started then as my finds often needed mending or altering to fit. I swanned about in 20′s chiffons, 30′s silk velvets and 40′s crepes…. not practical but I was happy.

A degree in Fashion at Parsons School of Design NYC was next (still wearing vintage of course) and a life-long career of design, illustrating, pattern-drafting and making for fashion, film, dance, theatre and private bridal clients began.
In 1986 I was offered a Fashion job in London which I took… and somehow I never made it back to New York.
Since 1991 I have been freelance working mainly in the ‘Light Entertainment’ field (which means tv, film, advertising and celeb and pop-music as opposed to important stuff like Opera and Theatre )while living on the South Coast of England with my family, three dogs, three birds and assorted fish. I don’t wear as much original vintage as I used to (the prices!!) but vintage inspired styles are what I love to sew for myself.

Being creative is a compulsion that extends to quilt making, learning to use Adobe Illustrator for digital pattern-designing, baking, gardening and the occasional disastrous attempt at knitting. When I’m not making things I like to read about making things.

I create, therefore I am.

-Jeanne a.k.a. VeraVenus