Mark Francis’ Top Tips: Ways to Hack a Pattern
Mark Francis’ Top Tips: Ways to Hack a Pattern
Join the Great British Sewing Bee’s Mark Francis and discover his top tips and tricks to hack your patterns. Create beautiful, interesting and unique designs by adapting standard patterns, experimenting with colour and utilising different fabrics.
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About
Join the Great British Sewing Bee's Mark Francis and learn his tips and tricks for pattern hacks. Discover how you can take any pattern and create different designs from it.
In this session Mark will use the example of a regular shirt pattern and talk you through the ways in which this can be adapted to create something new! Hacks will include:
- Sleeve head
- Sleeve cuff & wrist area
- Shirt body
- Yoke area
- Collar arrangement
Mark will also discuss adding colour and interest to your creations through experimenting with different fabrics for small areas like cuffs, collars, button stands etc. Plus, how you can lengthen your regular shirt pattern to make a shirt dress, duster coat or Kaftan. There is so much to be learnt in this session and Mark Francis is here to guide you through it all.
Meet the Master: Mark Francis
From a young age, Mark Francis recalls being mesmerised by sewing. It was his grandparents’ ancient treadle powered Singer sewing machine that first caught his attention and he and his sister would play with it endlessly, despite not knowing how to use it! It was at the same time that Mark’s childhood passion for Doctor Who lead him to dream about making his own costumes and clothes.
Needlework was not something that little boys were encouraged to do in the 1980’s, so over the years Mark indulged his creative side by playing various instruments, painting and drawing, singing and acting and learning to tap dance, but the desire to learn how to sew never left him. Many years passed until he had the confidence to finally learn how to use a sewing machine and even though he now has that skill, the learning never stops. The treadle Singer has long since left the Francis family, but Mark’s passion and love for making clothes & costumes, taking inspiration from Doctor Who has only grown stronger.
In 2019, Mark’s husband Clive applied for him to enter the Great British Sewing Bee and life hasn’t been the same since. Reflecting on the series, Mark reflects “The time I had in the sewing room, working alongside such an incredible bunch of creative, enthusiastic and hardworking individuals, both in front of and behind the camera, gave me the push I needed to be able to change my life and refocus on the things I love the most.”.
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*Immediate Live Academy reserves the right to provide customers 60 days notice of the removal of any content from its website.
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*Immediate Live Academy reserves the right to provide customers 60 days notice of the removal of any content from its website.
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Immediate Live Academy reserves the right to provide customers 60 days notice of the removal of any content from its website.
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