Sewing Advice to Live By, with Kenneth D. King | Episode 93

Threads Magazine Podcast: "Sewing With Threads"
Date: September 2, 2025
Host: Carol Frase (A)
Guest: Kenneth D. King (B)

Overview

In this insightful and engaging episode, celebrated couture designer and educator Kenneth D. King joins host Carol Frase to explore a wealth of timeless sewing wisdom, teaching philosophy, and practical advice. King’s distinctive approach—blending couture standards with “repeatable and reliable” techniques—serves as a foundation for both experienced and aspiring sewists. Touching on everything from his nontraditional career path to the future of garment sewing, Kenneth shares hard-won insights, memorable anecdotes, and actionable tips that speak to Threads’ audience of passionate makers.

Kenneth D. King: Background & Philosophy

• Early Influences:
  Kenneth recounts an unconventional route into the sewing world, beginning with Barbie clothing, then window display, and eventually couture construction and design.
  • “You have to have a broad skill set. It doesn't necessarily have to be too deep, but you have to have a working knowledge of a lot of different things...Understanding different kinds of things enabled me to cross-pollinate from different disciplines.” [01:37]
• Core Sewing Advice:
  • The grounding lesson: “Don’t put your time where it doesn’t show,” a pragmatic notion stemming from retail window display and tailoring that shapes his approach to garment construction.
  • Emphasis on making all sewing methods repeatable and reliable—tailoring a method to suit time, budget, and longevity needs.
  • “How much time do you have to make it, how much money the person is willing to spend, and how long it needs to last. There is a bandwidth of techniques that I choose from to arrive at that particular project.” [03:28]

Practical Techniques & Choices

On Basting, Linings, and Sensible Construction

• Basting for Results, Not Ritual:
  Kenneth challenges the notion that couture conventions must be followed blindly:
  • “Basting as half sewn, like sleeves. I will always baste a sleeve in and check it before I sew it because it's easier to rip basting out than it is to rip out stitching.” [05:34]
  • Advises using any color thread for basting—what matters is efficient cleanup, not tradition.
• Inserting Linings by Hand:
  On why he avoids bagging linings by machine:
  • “I like to nail down the facings, I like to put up the hem, I like to secure the cuffs. You can't do that if it's bagged...It may seem counterintuitive, but putting a lining in by hand gives you a lot more control. You get a better result. And in my construction, it's faster.” [06:55]

The Design/Construction Balance

• Equal Weight to Planning and Execution:
  • “The design and pattern making process, I would say it's probably a 50–50.” [08:30]
• Rigorous Muslin Testing:
  • Five muslins for a Nobel banquet bolero—"You cannot have an exposed armpit" trivia—illustrates detailed prep.
  • Thorough groundwork means successful, comfortable garments and allows recycling patterns for future use.
• Discovery through Experimentation:
  Instead of sketching, Kenneth builds technique binders:
  • “If I'm not feeling like doing any creating, I'll ask a question. Okay, what would happen if. And then I'll burn through some fabric...I have a whole series of binders that I'll put, like, seams, finishes, whatever.” [09:33]

Handling Unique Projects and Mistakes

• Testing as Insurance:
  • Always buys extra fabric for experiments and encourages sample-making before big cuts:
    • “If you're unsure, you make your samples. It may seem like it's busy work or not important, but it is. It gives you some information about that specific fabric and what it needs so that it performs the way you wish.” [11:58]
• Embracing Mistakes as Creativity:
  • “I always called them saves.”
  • A misaligned pleated edge at 3 a.m. became a featured technique.
  • “Perfectionism is a disease, because I create the illusion of perfection. I don't create perfection. I will be the first to say.” [13:18]

Teaching Philosophy & Student Diversity

• FIT vs. Experienced Sewists:
  • At FIT: Students may arrive with fixed ideas (“We couldn’t even hope to be a designer if we used those pins”—[15:26]), but practical skills and results trump dogma.
  • With experienced home sewists: More improvisational and nuanced; discussions focus on multiple techniques and their implications.
• Challenging Absolutes:
  • “There's not ‘never’ or ‘always’ in this... The answer is, it depends.” [17:22]
  • Experience and experimentation over rigid rules.
• Encouraging Practice and Realism:
  • “They want to be famous because they saw Project Runway...there's no shortcut. You have to burn through those acres of fabric and make those mistakes…” [18:36]
  • Some students absorb the lesson of perseverance and critical self-editing; others may not, despite his best efforts.

Observations on the Broader Sewing Community

• Evolving Interests:
  • The need for proper fit remains constant.
    • “Have a limited range of patterns that, you know, fit you and then experiment with fabrics and different details from there.” [23:47]
  • Noted uptick in young people, often drawn by upcycling and remaking (e.g., repurposing thrift-store pieces is today’s gateway to sewing).
  • Kenneth and colleagues prioritize documentation and education for future generations of sewists.
    • “We may not be talking to our kids, we may be talking to the grandkids.” [24:48]

Rapid-Fire Tools & Tips

• Favorite Specialized Tool:
  • The stencil cutter, a “poor man’s laser cutter,” enables clean, fray-proof edges on metallic and synthetic fabrics.
    • “If you don’t want to do a seam finish on that, you just trim it down with your stencil cutter and it doesn’t fray.” [26:19]
• Adaptability Across Projects:
  • One must pick skills and methods suited specifically for the project at hand (from runway speed to museum quality).

The Future of Garment Sewing

• Concerns about Pattern Companies:
  • “If they allow the pattern companies to disappear, the demand for your product is going to go down.” [28:48]
  • Encourages learning pattern drafting to minimize dependence on commercial patterns.
• Youthful Entryways:
  • Remaking and upcycling as a trend, though eventually limitations may drive sewists to learn full garment construction.
    • “That seems to be the gateway...to get some of these people interested.” [30:28]

Sneak Peek: Upcoming Book

• Doll Couture Red Carpet Edition
  • Red-carpet themed sequel featuring couture fantasy designs for dolls, tied together with a storytelling conceit (characters, sketches, outfit how-tos).
    • “Crazy Bella is on the red carpet talking to these people...At the end, she bids goodbye and she drives off in her sports car. So that is, it's a little different story.” [31:19]
  • Includes patterns for both male and female dolls; introduces some gender-fluid garments inspired by real-life fashion icons (Billy Porter).
    • “His name is Ambrose Freeman and he is the Billy Porter character in this thing...It's sort of a Cambodian, sort of a take on a salvar pant or a doty pant. So it kind of reads like a skirt, but it kind of reads like a, a trouser.” [33:46]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Perfectionism:
  • “Perfectionism is a disease, because I create the illusion of perfection. I don't create perfection.” [13:18]
• On Skill-building:
  • “You have to burn through those acres of fabric and make those mistakes and make all those garments so that at some point, you're going to get to a point where you can stand on the shoulders of the people who you learned from and go off on your own.” [19:56]
• On Versatility:
  • “If you know your craft and—see, this is, I think, where my particular background has trained me—because I can make something that gets on a runway in an hour...something that's going to live in a museum collection after 30 years of useful life and all in between.” [24:48]
• On Construction as Effortless Elegance:
  • “Make the process so seamless that it is invisible, and people then will have to accept you on aesthetics alone.” [21:31]

Key Timestamps

• [01:37] Kenneth’s background: window display, retail, and his unique entry into couture.
• [03:28] Defining “repeatable and reliable” sewing.
• [05:34] Rethinking basting and sewing efficiency.
• [06:55] Defense of hand-inserting linings.
• [08:30] Equal importance of design/pattern-making and construction.
• [09:33] Building a library of sewing experiments.
• [11:58] Importance of fabric testing and making samples.
• [13:18] Turning mistakes into “saves” and the philosophy of the illusion of perfection.
• [15:26] Teaching philosophy: challenging dogma, hands-on learning.
• [17:22] On the folly of “always” and “never” in sewing techniques.
• [19:56] Skill-building and the persistence required of new designers.
• [23:47] Timeless importance of proper fit and core patterns.
• [26:19] Time-saving tools: the stencil cutter.
• [28:48] Worries about the future of pattern companies and drafting skills.
• [31:19] Preview of “Doll Couture Red Carpet Edition.”

Summary written in the spirit of the original dialogue, highlighting Kenneth D. King’s wisdom, wit, and the shared passion for sewing at all skill levels.