Comments on: Copying processes #5

By: Kathleen

Kathleen — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 03:05:08 +0000

Carol, thanks for the tip. I bought one too. So great that you included the link! I have another pattern book about soft toys that I like for this same reason.

Gigi, keep me posted on the project. Sounds interesting. I also bought a baseball for the same purposes but never made a project of it. Do you want to borrow the bag?

By: Gigi

Gigi — Sun, 08 Jan 2006 22:57:53 +0000

Thank you, Carol! I ordered a copy.

By: Carol Kimball

Carol Kimball — Sun, 08 Jan 2006 21:23:20 +0000

Re: Gigi and cutting apart a baseball

Toni Scott’s THE COMPLETE BOOK OF STUFFEDWORK, out of print but available on half.com, is one of the best sources for getting your mind into morphing flat patterns into three-dimensional shapes. Translates beautifully to clothing for bodies.

I used to have two copies (won one for my own soft sculpture in addition to my previous well-thumbed copy) but the loaner is still loaned…
http://product.half.ebay.com/_W0QQprZ4717840QQcpidZ1186743342

By: Gigi

Gigi — Sun, 08 Jan 2006 20:49:21 +0000

Ever since you posted this I’ve not been able to get this bag off my mind! This afternoon I finally cut a baseball apart to see if I can come up with my own pattern (for my personal use only, of course). I brought home a new walking-foot machine yesterday and thought this would be a perfect first project. Of course, I’ll be fusing and lining mine!

By: Cinnamon

Cinnamon — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 23:12:36 +0000

This is fabulous and something I can completely identify with. I haven’t used leather to make bags since I still feel that I have a lot to learn with fabric and fabric is more forgiving of mistakes, and far cheaper usually, than leather.

Whereas “Beth” probably wouldnt’ have wanted your criticisms, this is exactly what I would love to have, and pay to have. It’s a matter of where to start.

By: Fashion-Incubator

Fashion-Incubator — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 19:21:43 +0000

Designers at craft fairs

Last weekend I went to the Dona Ana Arts Council Renaissance Craft fair; it’s an annual thing. I like to go to these things to shop the designers. Well not to shop exactly, I guess I spy on them (spying…

By: Jinjer Markley

Jinjer Markley — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 22:23:40 +0000

Kathleen says:
“I mean, nobody’s going to pay $200 for a bag that looks like someone made it as a home economics project.”

The problem is, this is NOT TRUE. the underground fashion scene (and that’s ALL we have _here_) consistently puts out overpriced, shoddy work because there IS a market for it. It’s not a huge market, but it’s enough to allow designers to convince themselves that ideas are enough and quality isn’t necessary.

The problem comes when you want to grow, and a lot of the designers I know don’t WANT to grow–they’re artists, and they’re perfectly happy making ends barely meet with their art.

By: Shirley Willett

Shirley Willett — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 21:46:30 +0000

First Kathleen, your discussion on the “quality of handbags” was really great education, and I am going to ask my “designer protÃ©gÃ©s” to read it.
Second, I love your comment “every designer out there swears their ideas are original” â€“ and most that I’ve met over the past 25 years really believe they are their own â€“ and about “creative synchronicity”. In the 1980’s I was teaching part-time at a fashion school, and had a couple of design students come to me crying that their idea had been copied by a famous designer no less!! I explained something like your “creative synchronicity” and now will use that delightful term.
Next I want to say a little about the apparel industry history in America. Which started in the Boston, Massachusetts area at the turn of the 20th century by creation of pattern making. When I first went into the industry in the 1940’s as a factory stitcher, then in the 1950’s as a designer, every apparel manufacturer, except for the really cheap, were COPYISTS. Boston and New York. Creativity came from Paris. I went to New York to learn to climb up the experience ladder in design rooms. My final job in the 1950’s before coming back to Boston as a designer, was advertised as “Designer-Copyist” â€“ it was so common. Gradually in the 1960’s the fashion schools promoted creativity, and thus began America creativity. But Boston was known as the “technical design center” because we concentrated on the technical and perfected it. As I began my successful designer-manufacturing business in the late 1960’s, I became a production expert because I had that technical pattern background from the factories â€“ and pattern making makes the production system. Other manufacturers in the 1970’s tried to copy my high fashion (leather & suede) styles, but they could not copy it for less cost, because f my efficient production systems. See my web site http://www.shirleywillett.com
My first time adding a comment to your great blog. Kathleen. Keep it up.