Monir Bloom

I have been raised in an environment where sewing was considered an essential skill. During my childhood, I saw my mum signing up for professional tailoring courses each year with the hope of applying her existing skills of using a sewing machine and being able to make curtains to something wearable. She, unfortunately, never could find a way of handling all things and always left the courses without a professional garment. However, those skills have been transferred to simple projects, and she was the one who made all our house pyjamas in a very sustainable approach – transforming her coats :).Great attention to detail caused us to not accept any off-the-rack dresses, and there has always been a great tailor who came to our house and made clothes for us. Later on, when my older sister attended a dedicated tailoring and design college course, my mum decided to stop asking our lovely tailor to come and prepare our clothes. Being still in our teenage years, sibling rivalry resulted in my sister making very ugly clothes for me :), which, in my older brother's view, made me look like a pregnant woman. When I asked my mum to sign me up for a summer sewing and tailoring class where I could be taught these skills and get independent, she refused to accept it, as she believed that me having everything A at school with the hope of becoming a doctor should not waste any money in acquiring a skill that someone else from the family is now the pro in.I ended up being a bit rebellious and finding a very cheap community-run summer class that was held in a 12 square meter room with no sewing machine and only a tiny whiteboard, which our tutor used to teach us – twenty-five students – how to make a pattern from scratch. She just verbally told us how to cut and tried to make a bit of simulation :). That course was only for a month and a half, and I ended up having a lot of great finished projects using all the directed and self-directed instructions. This was the time when my mum could not be happier seeing me with a very low budget (I was using newspapers to not buy papers for my patterns and using my mum's old clothes to make new ones for myself), now turning into a tailor. This was the time when my sister started seeing me as a colleague and eventually started teaching me all she was learning in college and later in university that she had gone to. I then became a radiographer, loving being a healthcare professional, but never stopped sewing. I was the tailor girl in our university hall who could sometimes be an angel. :)That acquired skill has gone through a lot of CPDs and somehow become a great hobby for me. The one that gives me a headache if I am not having it! Now, after having a considerable career progression in the field of radiography, having an MSc and being a lecturer for a couple of years, I eventually thought, I want to make my hobby in sewing and tailoring bigger and have a chance to see whoever is like-minded to be able to help them. I now see the first day that I signed up for that initial course and think to myself, how that lack of budget helped me to appreciate sustainability and how it has helped me to learn this skill better. Over these years, I've become a pro who values sustainability and who knows how professional techniques are going to make garments last longer.I am proficient in applying the traditional techniques not only to classic projects but also to modern-style designs and even simple dresses. I am also so happy that this is now a time for me on this planet to transfer these skills and make others proud of themselves :).