What is a Seamstress? Everything You Need To Know

When setting out to design and launch your own clothing line, you must understand the roles and responsibilities of everyone involved. It gives you a grander sense of what goes into developing a brand. Need that dress altered? That suit fitted properly? A seamstress plays a direct role in these and more.

But what does the job entail? Let’s learn more about seamstresses, their work, roles, and responsibilities.

What is a Seamstress?

Simply put, a seamstress is someone who sews professionally.

A seamstress dedicates time, energy, and expertise to crafting various garments. If you’re planning on manufacturing a high volume of clothes, a seamstress is essential to your success.

As with an expert pattern maker, it’s crucial to understand the work of seamstresses before you begin designing garments. These experienced professionals are instrumental in nailing the look and feel of a new clothing line.

What Do Seamstresses Do?

Whether it’s fabrics, seams, dresses, buttons, seamstresses have many creative areas of expertise to help you design garments.

Depending on the employer, a seamstress could perform various services to help clients. Things like including mending garments, helping design dresses, and ensuring clothes fit. They can also create things like belts, handbags, and outerwear.

They can therefore find work in fashion production houses, textile factories, and designer shops.

Some Sewing Terminology

To better understand sewing and the world of seamstresses, it’s a good idea to explore some standard terms found in everyday responsibilities.

• Backstitch – backstitching is a way to ensure stitches in a seam are stable. A seamstress will perform a backstitch to secure seams.
• Basting – Basting refers to temporary stitches. These are looser stitches to hold garments in place.
• Bias – This is a direction in the fabric, specifically a 45-degree diagonal.
• Beeswax – Using beeswax on the thread makes things a lot easier. It provides smoothness, strength, and ease to sewing.
• Bobbin – A bobbin is a spool in a sewing machine that provides seamstresses with a bottom thread
• Darts – Darts are crucial in creating the shape of the clothes around specific areas of the body, like shoulders. These are strategic folds and tucks in the fabric.
• Ease – This is how much room in the clothing the wearer has to move around in. A garment with more ease allows the model to move comfortably.
• Alteration – This is the act of adjusting clothing via sewing and cutting to make clothes fit better.

The Difference Between Seamstress and Tailor

A seamstress is a textile professional who creates, sews, and manufactures clothing. On the other hand, a tailor goes about performing alterations on existing clothing, ensuring that a client has the correct garment measurements and sizes. The two professions have many overlapping design responsibilities, and it can be a little confusing as to which does what.

In short, there are a few key differences, but both seamstresses and tailors have a lot of experience with sewing clothes, and both are invaluable assets when manufacturing clothing.

What Skills Does a Seamstress Need?

So now that we know more about what a seamstress does, what does it take to become one?

Some crucial seamstress skills are:

• Extensive sewing experience
• Attention to detail
• Great hand-eye coordination

Where Can You Find a Seamstress?

So, where can you find a seamstress in Los Angeles?

At The Evans Group, a full-service fashion development and production house, we offer comprehensive cut and sew services to all of our clients as part of the more extensive clothing line design process. As such, clients have unfettered access to our entire team of experienced designers from day one, ensuring that their haute couture turns out precisely how they envisioned it.

We offer services to both emerging and established independent designers.

Los Angeles Cut and Sew Manufacturing

Situated in DTLA’s Arts District, TEG’s cut and sew services employ the extensive talents of various seamstresses, sewists, and tailors. With custom orders, there’s no minimum required, with up to 50 unique pieces per style.

The sewing team answers to an experienced project manager. The project manager, in turn, initiates in-depth, daily quality control to ensure that a designer’s clothing line is coming out as planned.

Moreover, with these in-depth and nuanced services, you can employ several talented seamstresses to not only start a clothing line but make it stand out. Learn more about our in-depth fashion design process by visiting our FAQs.