Weekend Review: Clone Your Clothes

Clone Your Clothes / Claire-Louise Hardie
Exeter, UK: David & Charles, c2024.
128 p.

This is a lovely book by well known UK sewist Claire-Louise Hardie. It really lives up to what it promises - showing you how to clone your favourite clothes, without having to take them apart. Hardie also maintains an active blog, The Thrifty Stitcher, and her level of writing, communication and teaching experience makes this a very approachable, useful book. (and her blog is also great, do check it out).

The book is well laid out, progressing from simple to more complex techniques and ideas. The purpose is to help a sewist figure out how to copy a piece of existing clothing, but there are different ways to do this. She starts out with basic tips on analyzing your piece, deciding on fabric and construction order, and then choosing a technique -- whether that's Direct Measuring, Tracing, or Overshaping. Then she guides you through making your pattern (and at this point being able to add any adjustments in order to make your new version perfect) and making a muslin to test out your new pattern. 

It's very nicely laid out, and there are bright and clear photos to illustrate many of the steps, as well as some more inspirational photos. After part 1, the basics, part 2 is a series of 5 projects -- a capsule wardrobe -- where she takes you step by step through a type of garment to show how to get your own pattern from it. She covers a cami, wrap skirt, shirt, simple trousers, and a tea dress, all things you can select according to your own style and follow the instructions to copy and make up for yourself. 

The end of the book includes some extra resources like a cloning worksheet to follow along with and some other info you might need. After reading this book I think sewists will feel much more confident in this area and might just start cloning some old RTW that has seen better days. I haven't actually tried it yet myself, just short on time, but I'm really intrigued by it, and I felt like this book was a helpful guide. I appreciate the clear instructions and the multiple illustrations, and think anyone interested in this concept would enjoy this book. 

(more images and info can be found on the publisher's page fyi)