Whitney Luckenbill, better known as @TomKatStitchery is a local content creator specializing in all things wardrobe. Luckenbill uses her platform to document her love for creating unique, personalized looks. Her famous tagline and mission statement, “Sewing A Better Wardrobe” is displayed through her informative sewing tutorials, fabric hauls, and lookbooks found on YouTube. PATTERN had the opportunity to travel to Luckenbill’s sewing studio to talk more about her introduction to sewing, the start of her successful YouTube channel, and the challenges content creators may face off-camera.
Destany Long: Tell me about the content you create.
Whitney Luckenbill: Sewing is the basis of the YouTube channel but I do a lot of outfit inspiration and capsule wardrobe sewing; sewing things that you actually wear, not just the pretty party dresses. It’s functional art that you can wear, and it has a purpose. I do a lot of tutorials and sew-along to help people. My background is in a bridal work room so I have a lot of fast tips and tricks. I also had a wonderful sewing mentor that I met in 2011 that poured everything into me. My desire was to give that back a little bit or as much as possible, with YouTube being a huge opportunity to do that.
DL: When did you start sewing?
WL: I was self-taught. I wanted to pick up a creative craft. When I was pregnant with twins, I decided to make all of their baby bedding even though I had never sewn anything in my life. Pregnancy does really weird things [laughs]. I wrangled my mom, who has very elementary sewing skills, and we made the baby bedding. I was hooked at that point. We were living in Kansas City, then we moved here and I was just doing curtains and straight stitch stuff. When we moved here, I took a garment sewing class and it was the instructor of that class; our brains just really clicked. She reached out to me after that class and asked if I’d be interested in an apprenticeship. She was a professional dressmaker for over forty-three years and I went to apprentice with her. When she retired, I got acclimated with the business that was purchased by someone else and worked in that bridal work room for a few years. I then left in 2018 to do my own thing; being a mom, doing alterations here, and then started the channel in August 2018.
DL: Would you say that your large following came overnight or more gradually?
WL: I would say more gradually, but I will say that during the quarantine of 2020, I saw a huge uptick in subscribers and views. I did daily vlogging through the quarantine, not only to help with my own mental health, but I was assuming there were going to be people out there people that were having to quarantine by themselves and it could an outlet for them as well.
DL: What made you start posting your content on YouTube?
WL: I’d say that sewing became a thing on YouTube in 2016/2017. I found a few sewing channels on YouTube that I loved watching. I began to learn and see what was out there; I found it very inspiring. I thought I would give it a go, you know. I really enjoyed not only the content creation of it, but the community that started to form. You start having some of the same people that are commenting, and then you feel like you know those people. It’s such a cool thing to be able to have a community of people that literally is all over the world. I’m talking to people from South Africa, Australia, the UK, and right here in the US. I think that’s so cool!
DL: You mentioned that making content helped with your mental health. How do you balance your persona on-screen versus off-screen?
WL: That is a great question. I try and be as Whitney as possible on the channel. A lot of times I’m on the camera with no makeup, nothing like that. I want it to be very little space between the Whitney that you would meet at the grocery store versus Whitney that you see on YouTube. I try to answer all of the comments. That’s very important for me to answer questions and to have that interaction, but it can be a lot. There are definitely boundaries that I have had to set. I talk about my kids and my husband a little bit on the channel, but I have found it’s best to keep a lot of the personal day-to-day things out. For the most part, it’s a very loving community and everyone’s been great.
DL: Walk me through your video-making process.
WL: I release three videos every week, I do a Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday
. Sunday videos are all always a tutorial or sew-along. Those are some techniques where I’m doing pattern work and sewing a complete garment from start to finish. My Tuesdays and Friday videos are usually things like pattern releases. I work with a few pattern and fabric companies. I love doing videos where I’ve pulled ten looks that I saw in “ready-to-wear” for summer and then pairing those with patterns, and also fabrics that I can find. I think people have a hard time picking patterns and fabrics that will go well together, so I love doing those kinds of things; planning my own capsule wardrobes for each season.
DL: What goals do you have for your platform?
WL: Well, I love YouTube where it is; I think that’s great. I also have in-person classes that are coming out this fall. In the future, I would like those in-person classes to also be digital classes that I’ll offer on the website. That will provide more in-depth teaching. I will be keeping the YouTube channel with the same tips, tricks, patterns, and sewing inspiration.
DL: Any advice for future content creators?
WL: Just start. I literally started in my living room because that’s the room I thought had the best natural light. We even propped my phone up on books to give height. I didn’t even have a tripod at the beginning. We were using free editing software, which was very minimal at the time. I would say just start and see where it takes you. You can put money into equipment but you don’t have to; it’s a free thing. Just show people what your craft is.
