Putting fashion BACK INTO SEWING
We chat with Isabelle Finet and Teresa Bosteels from Fibre Mood who took control of their passion for designing stylish patterns for every Sewista Tell us a little bit about who is behind the Fibre Mood pattern magazine and how it all started? It started when I came up with the idea for La Maison Victor in 2012. I noticed a lot of young woman buying sewing machines, but missing out on modern sewing patterns and good explanations. Together with editor Sanoma, Teresa and I launched La Maison Victor magazine, and it was an instant success. In 2017, the publisher was selling off some of the magazine titles. We were afraid of loosing the magazine, so we asked to buy back the concept and title via a management buy out but unfortunately the answer was no, and it was sold off. Out of our grief came the strength to start over! We both felt our story wasn’t finished and we were lucky enough that the team behind La Maison Victor followed us! It was an incredible time, pioneering with no money. We had more than 60 people helping us with their professional skills and experience to make Fibre Mood real! Fibre Mood is now 18 months on and we’re on ninth edition! We now have more than 38,000 followers on Instagram, welcome over 50,000 people to our community and have subscribers in 27 countries. It has been such an incredible adventure, and we’re so so grateful that so many people were so brave to help our crazy story come true! Teresa and I say it almost every day that we’re so thankful we have such a great team behind us.
Who designs and influences the sewing patterns? That’s Teresa! She’s fascinated by colours, forms and materials, and absorbs literally everything! She’s researching all the time, and watching what’s happening on the streets, in the cities, on the catwalks, and in the world! What’s trending and what is most likely to become a trend? She loves to design patterns for clothes that are within everyone’s reach, that were too exclusive, too expensive, or only from big designers.
How often is a new issue released? Every two to three months, which equates to five Fibre Mood pattern magazines a year. We publish in Dutch, French, English, German and Spanish.
What makes you sewing patterns different from other indie patterns? We focus on urban street style, contemporary and sometimes more classics but we always add a twist! We always take into account different body types offering so every woman can build her own stylish wardrobe based on her body shape. Every
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