About me

Hello, I’m Emery Thief (any/all)! I’m a beginner sewist, and I’m documenting my projects in the hopes of remembering how I made a piece so I can do it again, learning by teaching improving my writing skills, and seeing the progress of my sewing skills over time. I plan to sew mostly 1970s-inspired clothing, with functional elements like pockets and gussets, and using mostly natural fibers.

I started sewing in 2023 after falling down a YouTube sewing rabbithole after watching Bernadette Banner’s Making an OnlyFans for Saucy Victorian Ankle Pics. (But why the historical ankle obsession?). That eventually led me to The Closet Historian, who inspired me to learn pattern drafting.

The name “Emery Thief” comes from William Morris’s Strawberry Thief design, which I find absolutely delightful, and the classic tomato pincushion, which sometimes features a strawberry-shaped emery.

Here is the RSS feed for this site.

Colophon

Garment making

Equipment, tools, & materials

• Juki HZL-F300 sewing machine with knee lifting lever
• Crayola Ultra-Clean Markers, Fine Line for tracing patterns onto fabric
• CHI Electronic Retractable Iron (from Costco)
• Dritz tailor’s ham and seam roll
• alphanumeric pattern paper that I received from someone on Freecycle! 💚

Resources

• The Closet Historian’s YouTube channel
• Evelyn Wood’s YouTube channel
• Internet Archive’s text archive, with great selections such as:
  • Patternmaking for fashion design by Helen Joseph-Armstrong, used by The Closet Historian. Only available to patrons with print disabilities after Hachette v. Internet Archive
  • Couture Sewing Techniques by Claire B. Shaeffer
• University of Kentucky Family and Consumer Sciences Extension’s Clothing and Textiles publications

Web development

This site is built with:

• Astro for static site generation
• GitHub Pages for hosting
• Pagefind for static site search
• Pretty Feed v3 default stylesheet for styling the RSS feed
• Petrona for site text
• Benguiat Caslon as the basis for the logo
• Astro Cactus as inspiration for the user interface
• U.S. Web Design System (USWDS)‘s link component’s icon and styling for external links