"The Illustrated Hassle-Free Make Your Own Clothes Book"

This is another classic tome of my mothers, found on eBay after many years of fruitless searching. It's basically a Dummy's Guide to Sewing Hippie Clothes and the little drawings are so wonderful. I love how crooked they are, even I can draw like that!

Their amazingly cute kids clothes ideas. A fringed vest is pretty adorable on a kid, and only on a kid, however.

These two women are pretty neat ladies. They dedicated the book to their swamiji (they must have lived on a commune!) and they are always referring to their husbands as "their old men". My old man this, my old man that, so endearing.

They also dole out some funny hippie wisdom such as "Men should be able to get over their uptightness about making clothes, about doing all kinds of things they have been brainwashed into relegating to women." Ha.

and regarding tailored clothes..

"We don't use darts because we don't use bras- they give your clothes a sort of funny shape.....except the no-bra kind which are better than most." Sounds like my family alright.

Also, how to make a dress with a tee shirt for a pattern. The directions are pretty loosey goosey and I totally ate them up in middle school. I ruined countless pairs of jeans by adding a triangle of fabric at the hem to make them bell bottoms, as I learned in this book.

These days I've moved on to making these little pouches out of leather to keep my camera in.

Thanks, mom, for finding another good one!