Picking Up the Thread With Little Bird Sewing's Sophie Hood
Hood, 37, is petite, with short hair dyed a seasonal orange, round glasses and a constant smile. Her studio décor echoes her calm warmth. Colorful bunting she sewed from leftover scraps crisscrosses the ceiling. Yellow midcentury-inspired chairs, stationed at each of her six sewing machines, pop against blue- and rust-colored walls adorned with Bread and Puppet prints. On a shelf sits a little bird sculpture she made in college — an adorable, fist-size blue oblong ball with a yellow beak and long metal legs and feet — that inspired her studio name.
Over the years, Hood has dressed up for her favorite holiday as everything from a wavy American flag in second grade to a hot-pink Marie Antoinette last year. This year's costume is a 1950s-inspired dress that resembles a pumpkin, which she'll top with a "really goofy" pumpkin hat she found on a recent trip to Japan. She made the black A-line petticoat on the form; on her cutting table, she was working on the orange corduroy dress, sewing vertical lines of wavy, light-orange rickrack on the material to imitate the lines on a pumpkin. Around the waistline, she will hang large green pumpkin leaves — forms she cut from thick batting, covered in nubbly lime fabric and outlined in dark green rickrack. She picked up two leaves and demonstrated how she'll attach them in a kind of bunched assemblage.
That sculptural touch is a mark of Hood's unorthodox training. While she majored in Asian and Middle Eastern studies at Dartmouth College, she minored in studio art and focused on sculpture, making wearable art for performance pieces she did around campus. During her senior year, she took a class in costume design and was introduced to costume production — the art of turning a designer's rendering into a 3D creation. "I thought, ," she recalled. Hood went on to earn a master's in costume production at Carnegie Mellon University, where she learned to integrate technology into costumes.
For her 2014 thesis project, a blue costume called "Bird Creature," she ironed reams of plastic grocery store bags into giant scales and attached them to a hooped understructure, made from wire and PVC pipes. In response to nearby sounds, a microphone built into the beaked head activated LED lights sewn under the scales; coils of electroluminescent wire lit up the creature's legs and hanging tentacles.
Costume production specialists usually end up in theater or film, and Hood has done both. While working for the renowned costume technology firm Krostyne Studio in Pittsburgh after her master's, she made costumes for the Boston Ballet's and worked on prototypes for the Disney's Animal Kingdom show . Carnegie Mellon, the higher-education partner of the Tony Awards, tapped Hood in 2017 to make a costume for a university representative. An alumna walked the red carpet wearing one of Hood's creations: a pink floor-length gown with a laser-cut design illuminated by lights activated by the wearer's heartbeat.
While working in the commercial world, Hood also pursued her dream of teaching sewing — something her grandmother, a former seamstress, taught her as a child. In Berkeley, Calif., where she and her partner moved after he completed his doctorate at Carnegie Mellon, Hood founded the first iteration of Little Bird Sewing Studio in her basement. She made costumes for Berkeley Repertory Theater and California Shakespeare Festival on the side. Then the pandemic hit, theaters closed, and Hood decided to dedicate herself to teaching. The couple moved back to Vermont last year.
In addition to costumes, Hood makes "a good chunk" of her own clothes. "I've always loved making things in any form," she explained, "and with sewing, the things you're making are totally usable; you can wear them or tell a story with them."
"It's a worldwide cultural thing, clothes," she continued with a laugh. "It's fascinating to learn these techniques that were around hundreds of years ago and that we're still using."
At Little Bird, Hood teaches private and small group classes for kids and adults. Adult classes range from introductory lessons in sewing reversible tote bags to sweater-, stuffie- and underpants-making classes. If students need help with a project already under way, they can attend an assisted open studio session.
Williston Central School third grader Spencer Ashley, age 8, began learning how to sew last summer in Hood's half-day summer camps.
"He would have preferred full day — he never wanted to leave," Ashley's mother, Julia Steen, said. She subsequently enrolled him in private lessons "because he desperately wanted to keep going." He now attends the kids' weekly sewing group, a two-hour afterschool program.
Steen, who doesn't sew, is impressed with her son's progress, from tote bags to a stuffie to an ankle snack pouch he invented. Most recently, he made a bomber jacket.
"He wanted to make a leather jacket, so Sophie found a jacket pattern and said 'Let's start with an easier material: fleece,'" Steen recalled. "She's really gentle and warm and supportive, and she's patient helping [the children] execute their vision." Ashley finished the jacket in two weeks and plans to make pants to match.
"It has kind of surprised me because he's very active, but he talks about sewing as his passion," Steen said. "He's so much more confident now. What else can a parent ask for?"
Jess Lamorey of Williston has taken private lessons with Hood since last winter to make her teenager's cosplay costumes for K-pop concerts and comic con conventions. Lamorey, already a sewer, said her confidence has increased since Hood taught her pattern drafting — the process of draping a dress form and marking the lines before cutting the material.
"She can figure out anything," including how to make a puffy sleeve or use foam to create a circular skirt, Lamorey said.
Hood often collaborates with Robin Blodgett, founding owner of Stash in Burlington — the area's only garment fabric store. Blodgett hosted Hood's first classes in her Pine Street space, and she now assembles kits for Hood's classes.
When Blodgett, who also sews, started her business three years ago, there were plenty of quilting and crafting classes in Burlington but no garment-sewing classes. (Since then, clothing manufacturer Fourbital Factory opened on Pine Street and now offers classes in its education center, Continuing ThrED.) Blodgett offered some adult classes but found they took up all her time. After giving a few lessons to her friends' children, she found she "lacked the patience and skill set," she said. She happily ceded those efforts to Hood.
"Sophie does everything with a smile," Blodgett said.
The need for instruction is growing, she added. Sewing classes appeal to a wide range of people, including recent retirees with resources and time; young people with environmental concerns, particularly about fast fashion; and people who want to express their identities through clothing, according to Blodgett.
Hood, who lives in Colchester, had plans to wear her Halloween costume at the Burnham Memorial Library's Trunk-or-Treat. During the event on Monday, community members park their cars in the library lot, open their often elaborately decorated trunks, and give candy to trick-or-treating children.
Hood always notices the homemade costumes. She hopes to increase their number by offering a monthlong class in Halloween costume making next year. Other ideas under consideration: offering more types of classes and hiring other teachers to do classes of their own.
"Sewing is something everyone can do," Hood said. "Of course, it takes practice to make it look really nice, but you can learn really fast."
