“Sew” Easy – My Project Proposal

I enjoy sewing.  It’s often therapeutic, and  I can spend hours walking through a fabric store or looking at sewing-related blogs.  However, going from an idea to a tangible item can be anything relaxing .  Patterns don’t tell you everything that you need to know and most hobby sewers don’t have access to a library of resources on sewing.  Currently, I may have to refer to about 4-6 different resources depending on my project for information on fabric type and care, stitch selection, needles, thread, color families, etc.  Moreover, I often have excess fabrics and no clue what to do with them.

I am interested in design a system that would centralize some of the knowledge required for sewing projects.

Here is a potential scenario:

• Let’s say that I have several yards of gray worsted wool, and I’m not sure what to make with it.  I could enter this information into my system and then receive a list of possible items that are commonly constructed from that type of fabric.
• The next step would be to choose the item that I want to construct.  In this case, I’ll choose trousers.
• The system might then return suggestions for appropriate lining fabric (and color for the fabric based on the color of my wool).
• The system may also tell me the common stitches that are used when constructing trousers, appropriate hem styles, appropriate sewing needles, and suggest which type of sewing feet that I may need.

The goal would be to present assistive information to a user that can’t (and won’t) be found in a sewing pattern.