Editor Reviews:

Product Description:
This easy-to-use workbook details the sewing processes, practical skills, and equipment used in apparel manufacturing. It contains step-by-step directions, approximately 1000 illustrations, and numerous reference charts. Efficient and cost effective procedure descriptions compliment material on the basic concept of design and desired quality—providing users with an understanding of various production methods, how they affect design decisions, and relate to garment quality and labor and material costs. Divided into three parts, the chapters logically guide readers from basic intrinsic operations to more complex specific applications for particular structural elements. Coverage includes basic machine and production skills; a complete treatment of seams; hems; darts; facings; plackets; interlinings; cuffs and waistbands; sleeves; closures; zippers; collars; pockets; bias; and linings. A practical reference for apparel manufacturers and sub-contractors, training and production supervisors, professional dressmakers, theater costumers, homesewers learning professional techniques, and a helpful tool for problem solving in the workplace.

Rating : - This book is expensive, inaccurate, and underwhelming.
Claire Shaeffer writes informative books about sewing and fabrics for the home sewer. Claire Shaeffer should have either stayed in the sewing industry or gained real experience in the garment industry before she dare charge $71 for a vacuous outsider's perspective of this so-called "apparel industry". The book has a generic text book tome and the corny needle and thread clip art screams "home sewer". There is nothing wrong with home sewing. I've been sewing since I was 10. Making clothes has been my quiet hobby and a source of unending fascination. The truth is: the garment industry doesn't want to deal with home sewers. "Fashion" designers and home sewers both share ignorance and arrogance as annoying, unappealing traits. Anyone can doodle on a napkin, but who can construct it from a sketch, fit it right, and sew it up professionally, within your cost structure? Not a "fashion" designer or a home sewer can do that, yet they think that they are greater than the process for they are completely unaware of the process. The goal is to work well with the fashion and garment industries. If you are looking for this kind of information in this book, you won't find it.

This book is expensive, inaccurate, and underwhelming. The "sewing on paper project" (page 50) is laughable. How will sewing on a piece of paper get me any closer to dealing with "the apparel industry"? Claire Shaeffer's terms are off. Apparel is nebulous - it's either the fashion or garment industry. The fashion industry sells the clothes while the garment industry makes the clothes. It's "block" rather than "sloper". Good blocks are everything, so learn how to make them and alter them yourself - for everything revolves around your blocks! It is your block that you take to garment manufactures from which they sew a sample. They don't need your pretty little sample. It is good to sew your "first sample" for your benefit, for you will know, in general, how to construct it and the number of steps for costing benefit. What are those 101 steps of garment production? You won't find the answer in this book. It is quite a leap going from home sewer to design entrepreneur and those of us taking that leap need accurate and relative information about the ways of the garment industry. Without accurate information, that leap means you'll never know how to contact garment manufactures; you can't define what you want and they don't know what to deliver; your clothes will never fit and you will have committed tons of money on a "dog"; you won't ever know the language of the garmento and you will sound like an a buffoon; you will sew the long, circuitous route rather than the expedient way like the professionals using industrial machines and practices. For those of you looking for information to facilitate crossing the chasm from home sewer to design entrepreneur, you won't find it here.