When you know how to sew, anything is possible in the world of fashion – at least to Coronado resident Cait Trantham.
The 37-year-old dressmaker is an online viral sensation with over one million followers on TikTok, almost half a million on Instagram and a quarter million subscribers on YouTube.
Her husband, Marine Corps 1st. Sgt Robert Trantham, and their three children have been in Coronado for just over a year.
One of Trantham’s most recent projects was making an elaborate dress from over 400 tea towels sent to her from followers all over the world.
It took her 500 hours and over a year and a half to complete.
Her hard work was recognized locally as she submitted the dress to the San Diego County Fair and won the Channa Mannen Award celebrating originality. She also took a second-place prize in the fair’s upcycling category for the reuse of materials or objects.
Trantham says her love of clothing design didn’t come instantly.
How it started
Her mom sewed, and tried to teach Trantham multiple times, but Trantham had no desire to learn. Her attitude toward the vocation was: “That looks terrible, there’s math involved,” she recalls, jokingly. “Like, I’m not going to touch that at all.”
Trantham says it’s ironic that she now has almost two million followers across social media platforms – doing a craft she initially disliked.
She had her daughter at age 22, and then a second child, a boy, at 25, and kept asking her mother to sew things for the kids. Finally, her mom bought Trantham a sewing machine of her own.
But that didn’t immediately launch a career. Trantham says she didn’t use the machine for about two years, until just around when her third child, another girl, was born.
But still, Trantham saw sewing clothes as too complicated to get into, so in 2013, she got into quilting instead, lightly quipping that people still love quilts even if they are messed up, but it’s hard to wear a piece of clothing that’s been messed up.
And then COVID-19 hit, and everyone was trying something new and trying to stay busy and motivated.
Trantham decided to finally venture into the hard, complicated, math world of sewing.
She couldn’t go to the store to thrift or buy fabrics, so she went to the one place that had what she needed: her closet.
“I started taking things apart from my own closet and remaking them,” Trantham explains. “And people my age were going to TikTok. It wasn’t just younger kids anymore,” she laughs.
This began her social media virality.
Social media
Trantham started with simple transformations of her clothes, just to post online, and the videos gained some popularity.
She likes vintage silhouettes, so she looked at what she had and tried to see how to turn those materials and outfits into something that resembled a vintage style.
“Dresses are my favorite thing to make,” Trantham says. “So, it was a lot of making things over to look more vintage because I couldn’t find vintage or it was unaffordable.”
Trantham says she doesn’t view her dressmaking creations as merchandise.
I never wanted the sewing or the thing that I make to be the product. I feel like the product, for me, is the video or the tutorials.
Cait Trantham
“I never wanted the sewing or the thing that I make to be the product,” she explains. “I feel like the product, for me, is the video or the tutorials.
“I feel like if I was selling clothes or selling things that I made, it wouldn’t be as special, or it would take away from the joy of it for me.”
The algorithm’s for monetizing across TikTok, Instagram and YouTube all vary, but GlassDoor estimates a content creator to make anywhere between $44,000 and $80,000.
TikTok’s process pays around $20-50 per one million views which, according to her page, a quick count shows at least 57 videos that all have over a million views.
Her most viewed video has 13.7 million views.
Trantham says she said she doesn’t feel burnt out with the crafting part of her job because she genuinely enjoys sewing and upcycling and being creative. The videos are just there to share what she’s made, and maybe help others be able to do the same thing.
“It’s a genuine passion,” Trantham says of the design and sewing work. “But creating videos and being on social media always feels like a rat race.”
Struggling to make a video better or wondering why her video didn’t do well – that’s something that she might get burnt out on, she says, but she doesn’t think her love of upcycling will ever go away.
Her projects
One of her projects was a homecoming dress she made in 2023 for her oldest daughter, Eden, inspired by a pink gown Lea Thompson wore in the movie “Back to the Future.”
Even though she doesn’t make a lot of clothes for her children, her daughter did approach her with this special request.
A video she posted to her social media shows the emotion from Trantham as well Eden, behind being able to make this dress for her daughter.
“It made me cry because until you make your own clothes or you have something made for you, you don’t really know what the feeling is like to have a custom garment made just for you,” Trantham says. “I think that feeling for her was like, ‘Oh my god, it fits me perfectly. It’s exactly what I wanted.’ It’s such a special piece.”
Trantham also sewed a dress made entirely from reusable Target shopping bags.
She looked at the bags for a while and decided to let her creative mind take over.
“I want to explore a new part of upcycling where it’s not necessarily practical and more exploratory and inspirational,” Trantham explains.
She also enjoys making things that don’t really make sense and are out of the box. That includes dresses from $3 blankets, old Barbie clothes and wedding dresses.
Even after a recent closet-cleaning sale, Tantham says, she has 80 dresses in her closet. Of those, she adds, around 30 were made from scratch.
Even though it’s been four years since she started, she does not see herself stopping anytime soon.
Who knows what she’ll make her next dress out of?
