It’s a breezy spring night in Somerville’s Davis Square and the door to the Singer Sewing and Vacuum Center is slightly ajar. Inside the smallish store, several women gather around a long table, cutting fabric, pinning, chatting, and puzzling over basting and zippers.
Suddenly: squeals.
“Ooh, I love it!”
“Can I take a look at your seams?”
The sewing students gather around Shelly Steitz and her hand-sewn, deep purple minidress, cinched with a chic wide belt.
“I made this in two classes,” the Cambridge crafter, 27, admits. “It doesn’t have any darts or zippers.”
The crafting craze is still in full swing, and the renewed interest in making clothes, bags, and house decor is part of that. But the continued success of “Project Runway” has also made fashion design and sewing attractive to the mainstream, spurring wannabe Christian Sirianos to pick up needles and thread.
The sewing surge has even gone digital: German fashion magazine publishers Hubert Burda Media launched the online sewing community BurdaStyle.com in July. The site offers free weekly patterns and allows people to post tips, pictures, and patterns from projects they’ve tried.
Students at Singer and at Spark Craft Studios in Cambridge gave myriad reasons for winding the bobbin. Some want to make custom clothing that fits. Others hope to save money by using bargain bin fabrics to create designer-looking digs.
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