From Jezebel: 

This week's DIY is a t-shirt DIY — which is, in case you haven't guessed, one of myfavorite kinds of do-it-yourself project, because of the ubiquity of the raw materials. And this t-shirt DIY comes to you with the help of a very special guest: fashion designer Natalie Chanin, of the label Alabama Chanin. She showed me how to do the most incredible things with a needle and thread.

In addition to the acclaimed Alabama Chanin collection — for which Natalie has been nominated for a Council of Fashion Designers of America award, and which you might have seen in the pages of such magazines as Vogue — Natalie Chanin runs sewing workshops and sells DIY supplies, clothing patterns, and kits on her Web site. She's also the author of three DIY books. That hands-on focus is unusual in high fashion, to say the least, which often likes to preserve as many illusions as possible about where (overseas?) and how (proprietary!) and by whom (paid?) it is made. And Alabama Chanin definitely is high fashion — its clothing can retail in the thousands of dollars.

Chanin is out to challenge the idea that "fashion" is about the designer, and "sewing" and "craft" is about the home-made. As sheputs it, making things needn't be viewed as a competition between the "auteurs" and the "amateurs." (This view also has a gendered dimension that is itself inherently problematic — "fashion" connoting that which is hierarchical and male, "craft" that which is humble and female.) When she started selling her patterns, she says, others in the industry told her, "You just killed your business." But sales of her collection remain robust, she says — probably because the many hours of work that go into most pieces make them difficult to truly replicate — and the DIY side of Alabama Chanin has meanwhile grown to nearly match the fashion side.

Natalie Chanin lives in Florence, Alabama, where her design workshop is located (and where her clothing is made, by local seamstresses who earn a living wage in an area of the South that has been ravaged by unemployment and industry flight). But this week, when Chanin came to New York for the Makeshift conference on sustainability and DIY culture in fashion, I jumped at the chance to meet her. We drank chamomile tea and talked DIY and did DIY. I learned things.

If you're like me, you believe that making things can be powerful. It's an exercise in autonomy, and it's a demonstration of thrift. I find sewing a purse, even if it takes me a week's worth of evenings (maybe because it takes me a week's worth of evenings) much more empowering, and certainly more satisfying, than I do buying one.

From EcoSalon:

MAKESHIFT: The Fusion of DIY, Music, Craft, and Humming by Melanie Falick

Fashion, craft, and design communities find Mecca in Manhattan.

Tuesday night something amazing happened in New York City. More than one hundred people gathered at the Standard in East Village, a luxury hipster hotel on Cooper Square, and joined together for a sing-along and finger-knitting. Really. It happened. I was there. Everyone looked elated, from the handsome 20-something guy across from me (who I initially assumed was a supermodel but is actually an up-and-coming fashion designer), to the chic magazine editors and design company executives who were sipping wine before they settled into the low black couches.

Everyone who was lucky enough to secure entry into this unique event seemed transported by the simple act of transforming a length of cotton jersey cord into a knitted necklace, by taking an old folk song, riffing on a few verses, and making something new.

Singer and songwriter Rosanne Cash led the sing-along. Natalie Chanin, founder and creative director of the fashion and lifestyle companyAlabama Chanin, led the knitalong. The occasion was MAKESHIFT: Shifting Thoughts on Design, Fashion, Craft, and DIY, a panel discussion kicking off a week of MAKESHIFT events organized by Chanin. Also speaking were Cathy Bailey, owner and designer of Heath Ceramics, Maria Cornejo, designer for Zero+Maria Cornejo, and Jessamyn Hatcher, a professor of fashion studies and the humanities at New York University. Moderating was Andrew Wagner, a DIY columnist for theNew York Times and the editorial director of Krrb.

“It’s like a small Pandora’s box opening,” Chanin says of the evening in which the main topic of conversation was the joy and value of making. “Making is as an integral part of all creative, design, and fashion industries. A conversation has been started and we hope it will continue.”

Cathy Bailey of Heath Ceramics recalled the tour she took of the company’s factory back in 2003, before she and her husband bought it. “Nothing was outsourced, everything was produced there. I think that’s what gave it that energy, that hum. There was such focus.” Bailey had, until then, been working as an industrial designer, but “Design wasn’t enough for me,” she says. “Something is missing when you’re only designing, when you’re not making.”

Maria Cornejo concurred. After leaving the fashion business, in 1998 she decided to open a store called Zero, where she and her team gradually started making things. “We put a rack of clothes at the front of the store; if people reacted to them, we made more, she recalled. “I miss those days when it was so hands-on.”

I personally grew up in a home where the handmade was revered and I edit craft books for a living – in fact, I edited all three of Chanin’s books:Alabama Stitch Book, Alabama Studio Style, and Alabama Studio Sewing + Design, the one that just came out and inspired the initial plans for MAKESHIFT 2012. So, given my background and day job, getting together to finger-knit is not as novel to me as it is to a lot of people. Honoring the maker is what I try to do every day. And it’s what Chanin does in her books – in which she shares instructions for the traditional techniques with which her clothing and homewares are made. “We make fashion,” Chanin explained on Tuesday night. “And we teach people how to make fashion.”

Rosanne Cash, who is an avid knitter and recently began hand-stitching Alabama Chanin clothing, told us: “All I want to do is follow Natalie around whatever she does.”

Chanin’s mission for MAKESHIFT is to break down some of the walls that exist between the fashion, craft, and design communities in order to find a meeting place so that “every maker, as well as the designs, products, and lives they touch, will be enriched.”

If the openness of everyone’s faces as they formed their necklaces on Tuesday night is any indication, the walls are coming down.

Crafting Fashion: A Pop-up shop for MakeShift curated by Billy Reid + Alabama Chanin

Opening Thursday, May 17th from 6:00pm - Until

Crafted Fashion, Food, Music, and Drink at Billy Reid 54 Bond Street, NYC Featuring a performance by Grammy nominated singer/songwriter Tift Merritt at 8:00 pm

Pop-up runs from May 18th - 25th
Store hours: Monday-Saturday 11:00am - 8:00pm, Sunday 11:00am - 7:00pm