Education
“Empowering women through education and creative design to impact the world.”
Fulfilling our Mission
of Empowering Women
The Collective Thread offers free beginner and intermediate sewing classes. We have had years of experience in Africa and St. Louis, Missouri training refugee women to sew and design while empowering them economically through dignified work. We accept anyone looking for a new career in this field and invite you to join our classes below!
Class Schedule
101: Intro to Sewing Basics
This course is designed for those with little or no experience sewing. This is a free class and the lessons will introduce basic skills related to measurements, fabric, and sewing with an industrial sewing machine.
Prerequisite: None
Course Objective: Ability to thread and operate a domestic and/or industrial sewing machine, utilizing basic sewing functions. Understand simple sewing instructions, seams, seam finishes, and stitch selections. Understand measuring and simple fabric characteristics. Identify basic pattern marking symbols, and complete simple sewn projects.
Length of Class: 4 classes
Cost: FREE; sewing supplies & machine provided
Limited to 10 students.
Intermediate Classes
This course introduces more complex sewing instructions, building on the Beginner Sewing basics. Students will be working primarily on industrial machines, and may be introduced to the industrial serger machines.
Prerequisite: 101: Intro to Sewing Basics or previous experience
Course Objective: Ability to adjust industrial sewing machine settings to accommodate various fabrics, including: stitch variation, thread selection, and proper finishes. Knowledge of basic patterns and learning helpful skills such as darts, pleats, gathering, pinning/cutting patterns, grain lines, working with interfacing, and a variety of seam finishes.
Length of Class: 4 classes
Cost: FREE; sewing supplies & machine provided
Limited to 10 students.
Join the waitlist below to be notified about future classes
On the job training
Even when classes are not in session, we have a culture of learning. We hire students from our classes that need additional hands-on training while receiving pay. We have other learning opportunities in design and cutting as well as sewing.