In this edition of 'From Where I Sew' I have been talking to Saara and Laura Huhta, the sisters behind the fabulous Finnish pattern house Named Clothing.  Named are fairly new to the independent scene and have taken us by storm.  The collections they produce are large: Spring/ Summer 2015, which has just released, is 12 patterns many of which are 2-in-1 pieces (a skirt and a dress for example).  Their style is modern and clean cut - truly a breath of fresh air!

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FROM WHERE I SEW: SAARA AND LAURA HUHTA OF NAMED CLOTHING

In Finland we have craft and sewing education in schools from as young as nine or ten.  For both of us the craft lessons were always the best subjects in school.  Also, the love is probably inherited from our mom who has been sewing for as long as we’ve existed (and long before that). Basically we have been sewing for our entire lives, and it was a very natural choice for both of us to eventually start studying design. Saara has a degree in Fashion design, with an emphasis on pattern making, and Laura has gratuated as a shoe designer. We have just started to sew at our ’office’, which is actually one room in Saara’s apartment.  It’s a very small space but includes our desk, sewing workshop, pattern stock and ’showroom’ (a rack of samples). Since the space is so tiny, it always takes a bit of organising to get sewing - digging the iron and ironing board from the closet, clearing space on the cutting table, moving stuff to another room and so on. Building a perfect sewing space really is a process. We’ve had this space for 9 months now, and it has developed into a well working office, but not yet a perfectly working sewing workshop. We have one sewing machine, one overlocker, and a bunch of other supplies, but not as much as we’d like to have! The only problem is the lack of space.  When we sew, all places seem to be occupied by piles of fabric, tools, patterns and other stuff. We don’t know if there are people who can keep their sewing space tidy and organized while sewing, but we for sure are not those people. Planning a sewing schedule is a really good idea, and we’ve just started to actually do so.  You can see what fabrics you could use from the stash, think what kind of garments you are actually missing, and what you would need the most right now. We’d love to blog about everything we make, but blogging is very time consuming and we don’t always have the time to write the posts or to take the images. There’s always more urgent work to do! Sewing for work is of course quite different from sewing for oneself.  For ourselves we naturally make fit adjustments and personal design changes.  However, we sew all of the Named samples in standard measurements, and it’s usually a bit more stressful as we need to get the collection done a lot faster. We have two jack russell terriers, Aida and Kusti which can be a distraction. Actually they are our parents’ dogs, but they often come to our office for a day-care. They interrupt us once in a while when they need to be taken for a walk, fed or played with. But they are damn cute distractions so it doesn’t bother that much! Unfortunately we don’t actually have that many friends who sew. We have been talking about organising a sewing-happening for friends that don’t sew yet - to introduce them to this hobby and to get them started. And it has been a huge success idea-wise! People are getting very excited about the idea, which is awesome! So I’m sure that will happen some time this spring, and hopefully it will become a recurring event. We’re dreaming about becoming better knitters. And, we both would love to take a class in bra-making! That is definitely something we want to learn. We’re also thinking about making the next winter coat using MTM tailoring, but that would be a project for next fall.

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Thank you so much to Saara and Laura for taking part!  We stock the entire range of Named Clothing patterns in our shop.  If we are out of stock of anything do not fear as we have a restock on it's way and due to be with us within a matter of days.

Photo Credit: Liisa Salonen