April 2022 – Ecole Holt Couture update

Another new year! Spring is a time of renewal, and we are at last renewing too. We have taken considerable time to slow down and just breathe since last fall. Sorting through the chaos, recollect our thoughts, remember everything we have to be grateful for in these uncertain and volatile times, analyze what is worth hanging on to and what things to let go of.

As you too may have gone through a similar process of reevaluation in your world, we have realized that some things gifted to us are not ours to keep. But gifted to take care of, and then pass on in the best way we can in our given environment. If we had not been the recipient of precious traditional knowledge, we wouldn’t be in a position to share anything of lasting value, and might have to do without it altogether, we might make do with the status quo or with out-of-context pieces of information, or we might begin at the beginning all over again trying to reinvent the wheel.

It has indeed taken some time, perhaps too long in my mind, and for that we apologize. But we have at last started to create a limited free tutorial video series this January and have already posted several simple basic skills how-to videos for couture sewing beginners. Keeping in mind that if you are trying something new out for the first time, you shouldn’t have to spend a lot of money to test it out first. As so for that reason, the fabric I’m using to demonstrate hand stitching is an old cotton pillowcase because it is something that you too might already have at hand. You may also have some sewing needles in your kit, a pair of scissors, some sewing cotton (thread), and if you are very prepared a thimble of some description.

The purpose of the intended simplicity, is to get you to just try hand-sewing to find out how you feel about it not only in your mind but also how it feels in your hands. If it feels awkward and strange at first, that is perfectly normal. If you find that it quickly begins to feel normal, and pleasant, then your stitching can improve with some practice and with direction. Hopefully we’ve included enough guidance in the narrative as well as the visual presentation, as both work together. Some will find the narrative long-winded, but stay with me, the information is necessary for future reference.

At this date there are about 29 videos posted so far on our Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/ecoleholtcouture  describing the tools we use at Ecole Holt Couture, and the most basic, but crucially fundamental, hand sewing tutorials for beginners under the ‘Introduction to Couture Sewing’ Playlist . You can subscribe to our channel and click on the notifications bell icon, to not miss new uploads. You’ll also find most of these videos in the ‘Project 1 video series’ playlist as well.

For those of you who might be interested in knowing more and might consider enrolling in Ecole Holt Couture’s membership program, it would be useful to watch these videos beforehand. Why? Because Project One (1) incorporates all the techniques demonstrated in the above playlists and it won’t be included in the first modules. However, there are still many more couture sewing techniques that are required to create Project One which will be demonstrated and applied in the membership program itself. We will be creating some Couture outtakes and soundbites videos found in EHC Information Posts playlist that will give you more insight if you are still deciding whether to join up or not.

Before signing up, we encourage you to follow along with the videos, to find out if our method and approach is something that resonates with you and that you’d be interested in learning more about. We understand that the way we present our instruction material modules and the approach that we offer isn’t for everyone. We don’t want you to waste time and money, as we don’t want that either. We want it to be a good fit for you.

We do hope that even if you decide not to enrol, that you will have gained valuable basic hand sewing skills that can be applied to repairing unravelled seams on your own clothing, sewing loose buttons back on, or in sewing simple projects without owning a sewing machine. You can be a survivalist by just using a few simple sewing tools.

Our online program platform has not been launched yet, because we’ve got a lot more modules to record, but we will let you know how we progress.

In the meantime, we recommend that you view the videos, follow along, and please leave constructive comments or questions either in the YouTube comments section or by sending them by email to info@ecoleholtcouture.com. We try to respond to comments as we go.

Also, thanks so much for subscribing to our Blog and our YouTube channel, we do appreciate your support! Below is video #1 and #29 from our ‘Introduction to Couture Sewing’ Playlist