Night Of The Dressmaker

Just when you thought I couldn't find something else to be tortured about... I have been tired of making my flower pin apron for quite a while now. I've been making it steadily for three years. Lots of them. Sometimes I feel like I've made so many of them I don't understand how come I'm not richer than I am. I really like my Peace Apron but I've been longing for something a little different. Because of my booth and my low inventory of cute women's bib aprons (I have really great cocktail aprons made by my very talented friend Chelsea!) I need to make some more. I wasn't in a mood to cut out Peace aprons and besides, the Peace Aprons only look good with limited fabric combinations. I want, oh...what is it I've been looking for in an apron?

It has to be a design that will look pretty good on a large variety of figures. I always drape on Headless Helen who is approximately a size 16. This isn't a style that I would look good in right now. The majority of women need to look good in it; not every single person. No dressmaker is capable of that. Anyway, it basically came down to: make a new pattern right now or cut out more flower aprons.

So I started draping. This is not a fast process. Even when you have something specific in mind (which I didn't exactly) it takes a lot of playing around with how the fabric is working around the curves of a three dimensional form. The reason most fashion designers like to work with flat chested skinny shapeless chicks is because they're LAZY ASSES. That's right, it's easy to drape and draft over a hipless, buttless, breastless sack of bones. To drape or draft over uncooperative curves? Not so easy.

Do you know why even the larger sizes of most clothes don't fit the curvy figure? Because they were draped or drafted on the sample size which is generally a size six or smaller. Grading patterns (making them bigger) preserves scale, so if the garment was drafted for a woman with no breasts- when it's enlarged it will still be drafted for a woman with no breasts. You know something I've observed about larger women? Even if you didn't have a whole lotta boob before you became a larger lady (me) you will have a lot more of them afterwards.

So I stayed up late draping, snipping, pinning, and shaping. I'm not sure how it will work in real fabric until I take down the muslin, trace all the pieces onto dot paper, true the lines, add seam allowance, and then sew up a sample in muslin. That's when you find out all the problems with your garment. Then you go back to the drafting table and you make corrections, then make a new improved copy of the pattern, and make a new sample but this time in real fabric.

It's a process I really enjoy. The problem is my general lack of time and there's always the risk that you'll get to the sample in real fabric and find that the design itself is infelicitous. By this time you have already invested many hours into the design. So it can be tedious too.

I have high hopes for this design. I want it to have a slight dirndl effect. I also wanted it to be a fairly full coverage apron. My charming flower detail apron does not offer particularly full coverage.

I got to bed quite late. I've been doing that quite a lot lately and it's not so good for me. But this working part time away from home is really messing with me. I can't get anything done. Ever. I remember this is how it was before I stayed home to be a housewife and it sucked. Now is the time for my million dollar book deal or for a rotted dinosaur to be discovered on my property. This working away from home thing is not a good life for me.

How do people take care of themselves when they're always on the run? They don't. Also, now that I am working right through lunch time I have had to resort to buying sandwiches at the health food store which include no local ingredients. Not only that, they raised their prices so that now my sandwich costs six dollars and I have to say that it's a pretty mediocre sandwich and that's a lot of money to a person who doesn't have much. So I am going to have to bring something but there's no microwave so it has to be something I can eat cold. Sandwiches from home aren't a great choice because there's not much to put in them. I planned on making a potato salad last night but as you can see I got sidetracked.

Here's a vote update: Right now the number one choice is Coffee Liqueur, the number two choice is Spice Blends and Rubs, and the third choice is a tie between Custom tea Blends and the Farmer's Market Tote. But there's still three days to vote so if you haven't already voted go visit the Food Related Gifts post and be entered to win one of the gifts I make.


I cannot believe it's already time for me to be getting ready to go to work.

(Is there a way to Feng Shui my person to attract good fortune? You know how you are supposed to put some red somewhere in a corner of your house or something like that? Can it work on your actual person? Does wearing red attract wealth or just angry bulls?)

The Winning Ticket

This is a new design I worked on to submit to Lark Books for consideration for their upcoming Apron Book. I know there must have been tons of other sewing bloggers out there working feverishly on the same project. This one didn't make the cut. So now I get to show it to you! I have to admit that I love it.

It's been so long since I've had the time to sketch and draft new designs. I knew I had to submit a few designs for this book or I would really regret it. So I cleared the decks. Let the kid starve, the dog go unwalked, the garden grow six foot weeds, and I hunkered down with my rulers, dot paper, and muslin and got my elbows deep in thread and pencils.

I loved working with a new fabric and playing with buttons and trim combinations. My work space was not Marth-neat. It was a whirlwind of scraps and pins and patterns and mock ups. It was so bad a pocket walked away. But this isn't the design I'm most proud of.

One thing I absolutely love about so many of the crafting bloggers out there is the deep commitment to recycling and the clever use so many people are putting to discarded items. However, when I try to think of cool ways to re-use things my mind goes blank. It takes a special tweaking of the brain and a slight blurring of the eyes as you look at something to see it new and differently.

When it comes to clothes, I also have a fear of tearing them apart. It's counter intuitive for me. How an architect probably feels about demolition jobs. My training is in building garments from scratch, not fixing them, not re-doing them, not taking them apart. People are always wanting me to do alterations for them, as though I must be good at that sort of tedious meticulous work which requires that you very carefully unbuild a garment until you get to the point where you can adjust a seam. It's like plastic surgery for clothes. I don't do that.

But I've always wanted to get my hands dirty with re-purposing because it's just so cool.

So I made smocks out of men's button up shirts. I thought this was so clever and original it was kind of deflating to discover (right after submitting this) that someone else had already been making half aprons out of men's shirts. Which leads me to wonder: is it even possible to come up with a single completely original idea?

But this isn't the design I was most proud of

I can't show you the design I'm most proud of because it got accepted for the book!

Technically speaking, I got permission from the editor to not only talk about getting accepted, but to show pictures of the design that will be included in the book as long as I don't give anyone instructions for making it until at least six months after the book is out. (It's a book of apron patterns for those of you who haven't already heard all about it.) So I could show it to you. But I'm not going to because I'm superstitious and I'm afraid that if I show it to you I will somehow blow this amazing opportunity.

I went to Fabric Depot yesterday with my mom to collect swatches to show the editor of the book because they need the fabric for my project to work well with the other accepted projects. (The fabric I used for my submission is a delicate cream silk fabric with thread thin black pinstripes. The other projects are all much bolder in print and color.) In San Fransisco I would have headed right to Britex and I would have found a whole floor full of silks. Not just bridal silks, but a whole range of silk shirtings and silk suitings. Silk for fashion. Fabric Depot has a tremendous selection of cotton quilting fabrics but their fashion fabric selection was very limited, as it is in most fabric stores these days.

When I asked if they had any other silk besides bridal silks, the employee who was helping me asked me what kind I meant. Like, what would I be using the silk for? I said I needed to find silks meant for more casual clothes like shirts. I swear she looked at me like my tongue had just forked itself in four. Can you imagine how she might have looked at me if I'd told her I needed the silk for a hostess apron?

Today my mom is taking us back to Portland for more swatches, only this time we're going to Bolt, and to Mill Ends to see what we can find there.

There were two things I was made to do: write, and design. Right now I'm doing both and it feels like coming home.


Note: The panic is still with me but not directly a result of anything going on. I mean, it's more a result of the building stress I've been under managing the store and all that that entails. Yesterday was particularly bad with my stomach full of adrenaline all day long. This morning, however, my body feels calmer.

Time warp: it's really 1989

I developed my bib apron pattern over two years ago through an intense trial and error of sample making and serious cursing. When I finally got to where it worked well, I just started using it. When you're drafting patterns professionally you have to go a step further. You have to make sure that every seam matches up precisely, that the curves along seams are the same curves, and that notches match up. Because I skipped this last bit of cleaning up, every time I sew the aprons I have to make tiny individual adjustments which sucks up time and is very annoying.

I am working on this pattern to send to the sewing contractors so it has to be good. They can fix it of course, but that will cost me more money. It will also cost me a little bit of pride. There are two things I was born to do: to write, and to design clothes. Everything else, however important, is incidental. So to send a sloppy pattern would be like sending some Hallmark verse to Leonard Cohen to review.

Now of course, I will have probably offended someone out there by suggesting that my role as wife and mother is incidental. Someone out there is going to think that I have marginalized my husband and son; relegated them to the haunted attic of my evil. (I was going to say "my evil genius" but since you know, and I know that I am no genius, why bother?) My husband and my son are the two most important people in my entire life. I love them so much I panic if I try to imagine what life would be like without them. My crazy cool guys.

However, nothing can change the fact that it was never written in the stars that I was to become a wife and mother. I toyed with the idea and came back, again and again, to the knowledge that I was never going to get married. And even when I got married, surprisingly young, I still had zero plans to become a mother. It took me seven years to be sure that I could tackle that gig. That I wanted, really wanted, to tackle that gig. Even after we finally decided, I really didn't believe it would happen. Somewhere in my mind I assumed we would find ourselves barren.*

So yes, my role as wife and mother is incidental. It happened, but was more like a pleasant surprise twist in life rather than what I was meant to be in that heavy way the universe plans things for us all, if you believe that sort of thing. I was born to be a writer and a designer. I know this because it's always been there. I always return to both even after swearing I would never sew again. Even after throwing down my pen in disgust and declaring that I will never write again because I am so bad at it that I embarrass the paper I'm writing on. I always come back. And when I do, it's like coming home. It's like infusing my blood with fresh oxygen. I breath easier. I fit into this wild world more easily when I am doing one or both of these two things.

So last night as I was adjusting seams by 32nths of an inch, maneuvering the french curve to smooth out rough lines, and marking the tag board, I felt as though I was swimming with the current; not fighting anymore, not thrashing. It felt as though time is irrelevant and it just as well might have been 1989 again. Me standing at the drafting tables in the class room at FIDM working on my final drafting project with my class mates. An Indian girl talking about her summer trip to India during which her parents were arranging a marriage for her. I sat there working on that pattern knowing I was in my element. I did not question whether or not I was worthy of the craft, as so often happens with writing. I am worthy.

I have a love hate relationship with sewing. Not designing, but sewing. It's more love now that I have all the proper equipment to turn out high quality products. There's a lot to be said for good tools. Back before I could afford a serger I hated not being able to make something look professional. I was impatient with the challenge of finishing seams the old fashioned way. Back then I was also using vintage sewing machines that had inconsistent tension, that couldn't produce button holes, and were constantly in the shop for repairs.

Now I have good tools. Still, I don't enjoy spending all my time sewing. I want to pass that along to others. I want to go back to the drawing table and make new products. I want to draft and iron out the details. I want to make samples and adjust them. I want to do what I was meant to do. I itch to do it. I need to do it. What I don't know yet, is if I can afford to do it. I don't know yet whether these sewing contractors will be able to produce my aprons for a price I can afford to turn around and sell wholesale. I may not be able to include the flower pin for the same price. There are so many things I don't know. What if I go into production and no one will rep my line of aprons? What if I can't sell them?

WHAT IF....

So now there is the need to decide what my wholesale line will be, what can I afford for it to be? The truth is, even if I can afford to have the sewing contractor sew the bib aprons and the pot holders, I will still have to make the cocktail napkins and dinner napkins (coming soon) myself. Because I can't afford to have them make everything until I have a rep selling all this stuff. What about the men's aprons? Do I include them?

Part of me is very worried about how all this will work out. But the other part of me is excited to be putting this all together. Calm and confident because how can my life fall apart if I am doing the two things I was born to do? Maybe we'll remain poor, but something good always comes of doing what we were meant to do.


*I actually predicted in my journal, two years before getting pregnant with a boy that I was going to have one child and that it would be a boy. Kind of spooky. But I didn't re-read that entry until after I had given birth to Max. Then I realized that I had known it all ahead of time. Weird, huh?