Although it is threatening to freeze again where I live, spring sewing is now what we should be doing, and Sew News encourages it with a lot of cottons and short-sleeved designs.
On the cover you see a blouse with couching--the sewing down upon a fabric, in this case by hand, of a decorative cording. You can do this by machine as well if you have a larger area to cover. Also on the cover you see the little coin purses which you can make out of remnants.
There is also an article urging us not to create remnants by doing Zero Waste sewing which takes a certain ingenuity in pattern design but whose purpose always eludes me when it comes to the home dressmaker. What is the difference between having extraneous bits of fabric hanging off my garment and collecting them in one of the boxes I keep for them? The difference between useless and useful is my answer. So my dog has a coat made out of 3 kinds of outerwear remnants, one of those remnants also lines one of his beds, one was also used to make a water-proof bag, etc. Using up scrap fabric is an old tradition, see crazy quilts, and one we should keep up, see the little coin purses.
Other articles offer useful alteration advice. Michelle Morris offers an article on how to alter a pattern to create tiers as you see in the yellow top and matching skirt. Kimberly Payne shows you how to alter a simple shirt pattern in various ways as you can see. Sadie Fox Metter adds a godet to a t-shirt sleeve to dress it up a bit. Godet = wedge of fabric shaped like a piece of pie seen from above. I like to use them instead of slits in straight skirts, but you can see they can give flare and space for the body to move.
In addition, there are technical articles on pleats, on flat-lock stitching, plus more alteration articles, and interviews with makers.
Fine it at your local fabric store, newsstand, or online here: https://www.sewdaily.com/sewing/sew-news-magazine/
