Jan Brooks

Last night I attended the monthly meeting of the local ASG Chapter. Jan Brooks was the speaker. Jan's day job is at one of our local sewing machine dealers, but she has also grown into quite the wearable arts maven. This picture is a detail of the machine embroidery from one of her coats; the pattern is one she drew and digitized. Yes, those are lizards interlaced among the leaves. They are kind of a signature touch of Jan's that she uses in a lot of her designs because of the Southwestern connection, and also because she just likes working with their shape.



She has been in the Sulky Challenge for several years, and even won the Grand Prize recently. This coat is the Grand Prize winner. There's an amazing amount of detail on this, definitely a show piece. There are yards of machine embroidery on organza in it. And of course, yards and yards of Sulky thread! It is amazingly light in weight considering all the stitches and piecing.


She also won a competition at Bernina University (she got an Artista machine for that one) and is going to be in the Bernina Fashion Show this fall. Best of all, Jan is a genuinely nice person in addition to being immensely talented and creative.




I picked up some vintage patterns at the Trading Post, including a couple of Advance Patterns. I think this company probably disappeared before my sewing days because I've only recently became familiar with them through Erin at Dress A Day. These 2 suits appear to be from the early 60's. I especially like the one at lower right, which features princess seams on both the jacket and the skirt.

The other 2 patterns are 1970's Simplicity. I really like the top with the flutter sleeves at upper left, which should translate well to current times. I'm thinking that the yoke would be cute if sheer or semi-sheer.