The value of custom made clothing

Through out my childhood I have seen my mother cutting and sewing most of my clothes. I have also seen most of my extended family (from my mother’s side) producing women’s clothing from their houses and selling them in their hot sticking 4mx4m little shops in Tanah Abang -- which is now famous for being the biggest textile market in South East Asia. 

 

 

It was always easy for me to ask mom to buy me a fabric of my desire and make it into my favorite dress/top/skirt/outfit until I got bored of it in a month or so. I’ve always thought how uncomplicated and fun it was to make an outfit. I never fully appreciated my mom’s labor of love, until 2 years ago when I myself went for sewing classes under the intense teaching of aunty Pin from the renowned PIN boutique in Alor Star. She was strict and sometimes harsh that aunty Pin but if it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t know the tips and tricks of effective traditional Malay women’s dressmaking.

They say that the secret to clothe making lies in the patternmaking; taken from customer’s measurement, calculated and transform into a specific pattern. True. But without persistent and constant ironing at each and every step as well as an eye for detail on sewing, an outfit would not feel somewhat fitting.

  

 

 It doesn’t really help when patience is mostly not my best virtue.