Thursday, May 8th, 2008
So I had this (what I thought) perfect idea for a dress. I made some modifications to one of my old patterns and started in using this amazing lightweight cotton fabric in a grey check. This fabric just calls out for gathers. The dress started out great, and on first fitting on the dressform it looked good. Then the further in I got the worse it got.
I made modifications and it looked good again. I kept going and it got bad again. Forward and back. Right now it’s on the total reject pile. I’m not sure if I will resurrect it or not. We’ll see how I feel tomorrow. This image shows how wonderfully it gathers and how nice it is paired with a light grey cotton with fine white lines. The actual dress is atrocious.
And speaking of tomorrow, there will not be a new garment tomorrow either. I actually have two things ready to go, but no time to photograph them and I’ll be at school all day. I have to say that so far the most challenging thing (other than the grey dress) has been finding time during daylight hours to photograph.
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008
It’s only been three days in to my “one a day” garment making exercise, but I’m already pretty excited and feel re-energized. In architecture, working with a new or unfamiliar material or using a familiar one in new ways often proves interesting and unexpected results. I feel my process is somewhat similar for the summer prints COLLECTION. I’m not used to working with prints, or working with primarily prints, and it has been fun to let the print direct the design.
I’m especially excited about combining the prints, and so it has been hard to limit myself to one thing a day -I want to make combinations of printed garments. The enforced quickness is also addicting. But I have lots of other work I need to be doing too, so I need to restrain myself.
Thank you for all the wonderful comments and emails so far and a big thank you to those of you who purchased the first items from the summer prints COLLECTION. For those of you who asked, there will be some women’s items coming soon and possibly some accessories as well. I might also repeat a few things, with modifications. I feel like these are all samples and I want to continue to refine them.
And speaking of process, the final review for my architecture studio was today. The studio was focused on a subtractive design process and the students work was amazing. It was a long day and now it’s late and I’m afraid I’m not going to have my garment for tomorrow. Only three days in and already I’ve caved. But I did have two items for today and two yesterday….so technically I’m still ahead right?
Sunday, May 4th, 2008
Tomorrow, May 5th, I will start my one-a-day making marathon for my spring prints COLLECTION. As this week is my last week of teaching for the semester, and that’s always a hectic week, I actually started making a few garments over the weekend so I’d be a few days ahead.
This is how it will work: I’ll post some photos to flicker and then update the shop with the item of the day. Originally I said the update would be in the evening, but I’m going to change that to 12pm (noon) central time. If the time changes I’ll let you know ahead of time.
I plan on making a variety of garments for girls, boys and big girls too, in a variety of sizes. I think I’ll keep it pretty much of a surprise until the update, other than a glimpse here and there.
So far this has been really fun and just the spark I needed to get remotivated after our long grey winter. I can see that the quickness of this is going to be interesting. Already I have ideas for changes to the first garment I made -so I think this process is definitely going to be iterative.
Thursday, May 1st, 2008
For some reason I’ve been buying quite a bit of printed fabric lately. Not a large quantity of any one print, but smaller pieces of different ones. As I’ve been piling them up I realized I like how they’re all starting to go together. This is something completely new to me -I don’t usually use prints.
I’m still working on filling orders for fall and finishing up some special orders but I am longing to make some new things. Quick, fun, summer things that I can slip in between the production work to stay motivated. I read that Lisa at Le Bouton is making a new skirt every day until the end of May and I really like that idea -one a day.
So armed with my new prints, I’m going to give it a try. Realistically I probably won’t make something every day, but I’m going to try to make something almost every week day, starting next Monday, May 5th. Each garment will then go into the shop that evening. I’ll try to post photos to flickr prior to the update.
This is going to be fun.
Sunday, April 27th, 2008
one button dress, UNIFORM Studio
I’ve been working on an order of one button dresses and tie front tops for the lovely Enfant Terrible shop. These will be offered in the light dove grey and also a warm dark grey w/ dark grey button and dark ties. I made this colorway special for Enfant Terrible and I have to say I like the combination as much as the original green. More photos here.
one button dress, UNIFORM Studio
tie front top, UNIFORM Studio
These will be available online at Enfant Terrible soon.
We are back to grey skies, cold and even some snow which means not much light for taking photographs. Photographing grey things in grey light makes me want to tear my hair out.
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008
About a month ago I posted about designing a sunhat for a store client. This color block design is the one they ended up choosing, although in the final hat the brim is quite a bit shallower. The colors we used were a light blush pink for the crown, a light beige for the brim and a bright pink for the interior. I think they turned out pretty cute.
The hats come in sizes 3m, 6m, 1yr, 2yr and are available at Estella in NYC. (They are not yet on the website).
Here are a few other versions I proposed for the above hat:
I’m glad they chose the color block version, as that was my favorite.
Sunday, April 20th, 2008
This weekend:
I cleaned my desk, went to Barbette and we have sun today.
Hope your weekend was as good as mine.
Friday, April 18th, 2008
I was getting ready to change my inspiration board, and realized that I have never posted a picture of it before. It’s a piece of (2ft x 4ft) homasote that I usually just lean against a wall. Pretty simple.
I mainly use the board as a place to put images that I like to look at. My sketchbook is what I use to work out of. Here I can also pin up little things that don’t fit into my sketchbook, like this ringset of felt samples. I love the saturation of colors in these and like having them here, even though I don’t use bright color much.
I realized when I was taking the photos that I don’t ever put up fashion images. What inspires me doesn’t usually come from fashion. Most of what ends up here has to do with material and light, and there are many architectural images.
It’s also important to me (maybe most important) that the juxtaposition of all of the images works. Everything must work together as a whole visually, or I feel jittery.
There is an inspiration board group over at flickr. Some of my favorites are just taped to a wall: here, here and here.
Wednesday, April 16th, 2008
All of a sudden, spring has arrived. finally.
A few things that are going on here as well as some spring inspiration:
Still working on many many wholesale and special orders. Some bolts of flawed fabric through my schedule way off. ugh.<br/>
In between production sewing I’m trying to keep motivated by making a few fun things here and there. Right now I’m working on something with this fabric, and I’m working out this hat design.<br/>
Since I’m so behind, I’m going to have to postpone the next shop update. I will try to get to it as quick as I can, but realistically it will probably not happen for a month or so.
I’ve been trying out a lot of open source software lately. So far I’m extremely happy with open office (word processing and presentation (like powerpoint) software). GIMP, which is very similar to photoshop has been easy to use although I need to figure out their image resoulution/resizing tools.<br/>
I also upgraded to wordpress 2.5. YIKES. So glad that’s over. Much fiddling later I can now upload images. If you’re experiencing similar problems I would suggest throwing salt over your shoulder and spinning around three times, followed by a bottle of wine. Totally random what works to fix the bugs.<br/>
My spring uniform: White shirt, canvas shoes (black on black), high waist jeans.
The relationship between architects and fashion.
Monday, April 7th, 2008
Joyn by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec for Vitra
The other night I took an hour to sort through fabrics and thread and put away some piles of papers and other misc. things that had been accumulating around my work area. I have been so busy sewing to fill orders lately that things have really gotten out of hand. I was feeling stressed out and like I didn’t have things under control. Once the clutter was put away I immediately felt like I had more done than than I had previously thought. I had a better idea of what needed to be done next and in what order.
It’s strange how just organizing makes everything appear simpler.
In his book, The Laws of Simplicity, John Maeda uses the example of tabbing in word processing to illustrate how organizing can make anything appear simpler. He takes a list of words that are separated by a single space and puts them into vertical rows that are tabbed in equal spacing. The words are all different lengths, so the spaces between words are different, but since they all start at the same point there is a sense of order with variation. Simple and maybe obvious, but seeing the words organized this way made me more aware of how powerful simple organization can be.
Organization makes a system of many appear fewer. John Maeda, The Laws of Simplicity
I continue to dream about the perfect, organized workspace. I haven’t made any real physical progress on this, but I’ve been thinking about how I work and how best to organize a space when I do have one. I like the idea of one large table to work on (you can see my dream table above). Having everything on one big surface with space in between seems like a nice way of organizing a space -similar to the tabbing in word processing idea. Visually pleasing and organized but not too rigid.
I also like to work on a table in the center of a room, moving around the edge. That way the room feels bigger -I’m looking out to the room across the table with my back to the wall rather than facing a wall with my back to a room. And this seems optimal if you are working with someone else -you can face each other rather than have your back to each other.
For materials I love this way of organizing fabric that MOOP has incorporated into their studio. A great way to visually organize materials and allow you to see everything you have all together.
We still don’t have spring here (it’s been snowing this morning), which is good for focusing on work indoors, but I’m dreaming of warmer days and sunshine on a big white table.
(ps -thank you so much for your kind comments and emails about my process and the weird skirt. I have to say it took some guts for me to put that one out there. It kind of felt like being in public in my underwear.)
