The Maker's Atelier: The Essential Collection: Sewing with Style

The Maker's Atelier is for women of any age or shape who want to dress well but cannot always find what they want in stores. Frances Toibin's self-proclaimed mission is to help fashion-conscious women create their own beautiful clothes to wear with style. It is founded on the belief that the simplest shapes in the finest fabrics make the most successful clothes. In The Essential Collection, designer Frances has taken the key shapes from some of the most enduring fashion trends, such as the pencil skirt and the boxy shirt, and refined them into clear dressmaking patterns with easy-to-follow instructions. Frances has sources the perfect fabrics to suit each garments and shows four alternative looks for each pattern to provide further technical know-how as well as style ideas to enable the home dressmaker to make their own capsule collection of garments unique to them. For example, the pencil skirt is shown in navy gabardine to suit an elegant working wardrobe, but alternatively this skirt takes on an edgier look when made up in metallic stretch fabric with a raw hem. With dressmaking patterns supplied in the pack alongside the book, and given in sizes 4 to 16, The Essential Collection makes it possible for all women - whether dressmaking novices or accomplished seamstresses - to own an enviable selection of timeless and adaptable staple garments.

Frances Toibin has been making clothes for as long as she can remember. Initially taught dressmaking as a child by her mother, Frances then trained in Fashion & Textiles and graduated from the Royal College of Art. While Frances went on to design fashion ranges for many leading brands, including Gucci, Esprit, and French Connection, she always continued to make her own clothes to her own designs rather than using commercial patterns in order to get the look that she really wanted. After continual compliments on her clothes, Frances decided to launch her own range of dressmaking patterns and determined to make them the most stylish dressmaking patterns available, and so The Maker's Atelier was created.