Comments on: How quickly we forget

By: Jen Rocket

Jen Rocket — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 19:26:14 +0000

By the way that dress is cute, I’d wear it if it were in better shape

By: Jen Rocket

Jen Rocket — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 19:22:08 +0000

Thanks for sharing this. I too will admit something. I began sewing with my mother at the age if 5, never really stopped, then after college I was sewing for 4 years successfully draping dresses and selling them, doing alterations and couture gowns & costumes, and I didn’t once “use” the grain line. In fact I didn’t even really know what it was or why. I just made the fabric work knowing where it should fall and where the stretch should be. Once I found out what the word meant and why it was being used a lot- unfortunately on the job in LA! It was just after I had been there for a year so I was a resident California so I started taking classes in pattern making, couture and production sewing techniques etc. I have to say that when I was taking classes I was happily teaching other students just as much as I was learning new things from the instructors!
When I look back it was just a word more than anything else,I knew the technique just not the lingo. But, It was a good kick in the butt I’ll ever forget.

By: AJ

AJ — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:16:02 +0000

omg Kathleen thanks for linking to this from FinalFashion.ca today. The inside of my wedding dress looked like this!! And by god I would have used staples if I could have…I remember thinking about using them as I was sewing the hem actually. I designed the dress with around 16 panels and boy did I tire of sewing them (all the way to the train) rather quickly!!

By: intransigentia

intransigentia — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 19:38:56 +0000

Hi, lurking fan showing up to comment – I’m a pretty beginner sewist and even I wouldn’t do that to a dress. But if you ignore the construction, the design itself is quite lovely. I’d really like to see it in more detail!

By: Natasha

Natasha — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 06:41:37 +0000

Well this reminds me of the fashion show at my college one year where despite the efforts of my production team to get quality work on the runway someone snuck her dress into the line up (self modelled) which was pinned onto her body. Yes she DID dispense with sewing and MAY have used a stapler and yet somehow the “industry” professionals judging choose to give her an award for her *cough* efforts.

By: Danielle

Danielle — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 16:18:21 +0000

Aw, this reminds me of the dress I included in my portfolio to get into university. I shudder when I think of it now; no drafting, random s/a, grain – what’s that?, major glitches in the lining – I’m talking puckers an inch and half deep!, uneven buttons… I could go on! And yet it got me into university, one which is notorious for turning people down. Everyone has to begin somehow:) – everyone has their hack sewing experience. Thanks for showing yours Kathleen. It reminds me how much I’ve learned in a few years. I bet a few years from now I’ll look back at my grad collection and roll my eyes… I hope I’ll be that much better by then.

By: Jinjer

Jinjer — Sun, 14 Aug 2005 01:21:55 +0000

Although I’ve ever been to design school, I’m certain Jan is right about the 3D sketch thing. Which is fine, becase it was design school, not sewing school.

The frightening thing is the rise in popularity of “deconstructed” clothing in underground fashion circles. Really, they should say “Barely put together,” because it’s so awfully made. And the designers command super high prices because they’re such geniuses with such original ideas.

The thing that REALLY gets my goat is they HAVE A MARKET. I mean, people buy this stuff; really, they do. I’ve tried to figure out this phenomenon, and the only reasons I can come up with are:

1) The buyers believe the hype of the pretentious designers
2) Most “factory” clothes are sewn nicely, so crappily sewn clothing automatically looks “original”
3) Wearing unfinished clothes is rebelling against the establishment.
4) there’s a surplus of graphic designers in this town (San Francisco), and maybe they like these clothes ’cause they look more like graphic design experiments than clothes.

I get VERY frustrated in my ongoing endeavor to improve my quality, etc, because whenever I throw in the towel and make some crappy experiment, it sells. I need to enter a new market (but I haven’t got the capital…working on it.)

By: Susan McElroy

Susan McElroy — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 18:13:34 +0000

This does make sense; in other words, the dress is a design rendering in fabric. I’d assume that a drawing can never convey the way the actual fabric would look or behave, and the reward was for that success. So say a DE wants to take it further. If I recall in Kathleen’s book (by memory because MY SISTER WON’T GIVE IT BACK and my copy is being delivered) this item wouldn’t be the “sample” she/he gives to her rep, right? It has to be resewn for that, as no rep could sell a future order if the sewing quality was so poor. Is the assumption of design schools that the designer will work for a company that will buy the design outright and take it from there?

By: Jan d'Heurle

Jan d'Heurle — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 17:21:17 +0000

Clearly, the criteria for Kathleen’s dress was not fine sewing, but design talent. Anyone can learn to sew; but in the end it’s all those other things that really count: knowing what fabric to use for the design, for instance, and using that fabric (whether a print, plaid or solid) to best advantage; integrity of design; and that quality of flair or panache that adds a sparkle of excitement to a garment. All the defects in this particular dress could be fixed without too much trouble, I think.

By: Susan McElroy

Susan McElroy — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 16:29:22 +0000

This place is so intriguing…here I get here on Sat ready to do the zipper tutorial (got all the templates made) and I get waylaid by this discussion…I was talking to some people who attended a local university-sponsored “design workshop” and was very surprised to learn (as were these pretty experienced home sewers) that the prof didn’t care much about sewing quality; in fact there was a lot of what is shown in this example in terms of bad seams, closings, etc. One woman brought the sample to show just how awful “good” was for the purposes of this seminar. Of course we asked why, and this lady said that the attitude was that the “samples” didn’t need to be well sewn; that it was assumed that the detail quality would be worked out later. (I assume by the contractor?) As someone fascintated by the business of sewing, I was perplexed. Does this mean that these garments are considered like say, three-dimentional “sketches” or something? When I’ve come across the term “sample” when I read what I can about the industry, I figured that the object is to show how the item is to be sewn, not a rendering for purely design demonstration. At what point does a contractor prove to the designer his/her ability to render the item into a quality finished product? Are there two kinds of “samples”?