Tailoring and The English Cut

Susan passed me a link to The English Cut, another sewing related blog. Your host is Thomas Mahon, bespoke tailor on Savile Row London [his blog is much nicer than mine and the RSS feed on his site works!] His most recent posting is "how to cut a pattern" and my inner-autie compells me to mention that Mahon uses the word "block" -not sloper- too. Nice photography illustrates his posts; cut here! shows a nice chalk-out on fabric of a man's suit; the patterning of which facilitated by the vertical stripe.

In another vein, On Tailoring As a Model for Open Source business models (via gapingvoid) James Govenor writes:

Tailors dont need proprietary designs to create beautiful expensive suits for their clients. They might cut a pocket slightly differently, or add a button. But its the tailoring that creates the value. That is, a tailor competes on the basis of implementation, brand and credibility. The same is going to be true of many businesses building around open source, including RedMonk.

This quote is yet another reiteration that the sewn products industry is not "open source". Access to information is the greatest barrier; having practical and technical information readily available is the only thing that will lead to a level playing field, or at least a entry level, level playing field. People should not have to compete for access to information. Rather, make it readily available and let's see who does what with what -in other words- how well the information is implemented. That's the only way I can see consumers gaining an edge towards meaningful apparel choices. The latter is a partial explanation of why I'm boycotting my own industry.

In keeping with today's topic of tailoring, Eric sent links to MyCustomTailor , a wonderfully comprehensive site for anyone interested in tailoring. Nice photographs illustrate the company's manufacturing standards such as full vents (sleeve vents too), rolled lapels, inside pockets etc. Mycustomtailor has an extensive articles archive as well. You can find the archives by scrolling through to the bottom of this article.

The zen of the survival of the prettiest

As I said before, I'm not entirely in agreement with Phaedrus (_zen..._) with regard to quality which he simply defined as beauty; an inherent beauty no one can name but all can recognize. Similarly, the definition of quality has evolved qualitatively a great deal since. Still, there's a beauty you can't deny _the zen of motorcycle maintenance_, so which is true? Perhaps this is why reading _survival of the prettiest_ by Nancy Ectoff was -in a circuitous way- a potential rebuttal to all that Robert Pirsig wrote. I loved her book, still thinking she'd disprove the quality-as-beauty debate but this was not to be. Her closing paragraph:

As women and men seek that wider circumference in their own lives, it is wise to remember Eliot's words: "All honour and reverence to the divine beauty of form! Let us cultivate it to the utmost in men, women and children-in our gardens and in our houses. But let us love that other beauty too, which lies in no secret of proportion but in the secret of deep human sympathy." We cannot wait for beauty, we must bring it forth.

It's a hopeful book, and it's about all of us, who we are, what we value and why. In reading the book, you learn that how we feel about beauty and act upon it, says more about ourselves than we'd ever care to label. If you are a fashion designer -or want to be- I'd designate this as a must-read. If you are targeting the wealthy elite, this is definitely required. If you're interested in demography shifts and long term trends, there are ideas to explore here. I'll be quoting portions of the book over time as it relates to defining one's target demography and specific anthropometric standards and studies mentioned therein.

>cough< Etcoff's book also -unfortunately- tends to fuel some of my irritations, for example, how the word "curvy" has been co-opted to mean "fat". Curvy does not mean fat. Curvy means a hip-waist differencial of .8 or lower. It's harder to draft for large differences over smaller distances than it is to draft for smaller differences over longer distances. Using the right words matters when talking to technical people regardless of how you feel about it. We can't be expected to be up on all the latest social connotations. You might think this is no big deal but if curvy now means fat, then how can we describe women who really are curvy in spite of the hijaked social connotation? You couldn't describe these women as "sticks" since it's not true in anything other than a comparative (but not technical) sense and amounts to beauty-bashing; the latter saying more about the one who employs it than the one it's being used against.

Entrepreneur's discussion list

I've been running a proto discussion list hoping to become acclimated to contact again after having been so long away. It's private and open to book owners (entrepreneur's guide to sewn product mfg) or other interested parties who have reason to believe they'd be an asset to the group. You can email me for more information or register on my commercial website for automatic consideration. I'll be jumpstarting the proto list within the next two weeks. The discussion list focuses on peer consulting, referrals, resources and news affecting sewn product start ups.

The boy has stayed home from school the past two days; I have not been productive.

I am looking for flat oak-tag pattern paper sheets preferably 150lb, 48" by_ " (whatever it usually is).

nothing pithy here either

There was a great article n the NY Times -ostensibly- about lean manufacturing in the furniture business. I qualified that because I don't think it's possible for sewn products people to fully integrate into the concept; I don't agree that the inherent nature of our input processes permit it. You can't smelt out a blouse front like you can a metal rod. Anyway, you might like to read about American Leather, A made-in-USA start-up who took on importers and beat them with products that cost three times as much. Virginia Postrel explains people will pay more for your product due to selection and turn-around; American Leather is fast; they guarantee 30 day delivery but still ship some orders in 2 to 3 weeks.

This is what most impresses me about American Leather
It also built relations with retailers by providing sales tools and training...."The retailers love them," Mr. Epperson, the analyst, said. Each quarter, the company brings 50 to 70 store owners and retail salespeople to Dallas for two days of training called American Leather University, begun in 1999..."There are so many manufacturers that don't think about partnering as far as marketing education, and they do," said Connie Stevenson...

Remember you heard that from a feed-store owner too. I wonder if they need a leather pattern maker. I think this is exciting. All of us know you can make products in the US and still turn a profit but a lot of people don't. Since all boats float in a rising tide maybe our tide is turning. And yes, I read that the Chinese have lowered prices in the face of lowered tariffs. I don't see how that can affect niche products or quality producers with low turn-around times.

Speaking of niche markets and products, I took a tour through the DE baby sling business (I saw 3 book buyers on the list; made me feel good). Wow, who knew? It seems the DE companies producing baby slings are actively helping each other in very direct ways. They've created their own community. They have a discussion list, they swap and test each other's products and they even have free instructions and free patterns so people can make their own baby slings rather than buying them. I think that is pretty cool. I've been saying forever, DEs have got to stick together and these businesses are doing it. Obviously they learned that paranoia is a business death kiss. I wonder if they'll form an association, that'd be cool too.

I got out some old issues of _the designer's network newsletter_ formally published by yours truly. I wasn't surprised to find it dated, I was surprised to find it funny, rough and randy. I was scrappier than a rabid badger in those days. I guess the last few years have kicked a lot of life out of me. Funny how people keep asking about it, I should reprint it, I could use the money. Btw -to my former subscribers- my aunt Tina is still alive and well in El Paso ("lunchbox kids"). She's 80 something, totally blind and still on the go.

I haven't been able to read, I have a new project and the pattern of it keeps hijacking my screen. I hate those kinds of pop-ups. Maybe you know what I mean. A shape jumps right in front of you, starts contorting, morphing itself with darts, shaping, then folding. It's kind of fun to watch sometimes but I can't do anything while it's happening (this is called "stimming"). I probably lost 4 hours to a pair of rectangles on Monday (here's a partial sketch from my notes; sew A to A, B to B, C to C and shape the collar to suit). Seems like a real waste of time unless you know it's an on-grain cut but bias-oriented dress with near 98% utilization and will fit great! (I'll stick a link in here once I make it up; this text will be gone when I do). Sometimes noises hijack my screen. If somebody touches my pattern scissors, I know it. I can't contentrate on anything til I disengage whoever has -unfortunately- touched my most prized possession. And you thought you were weird about your scissors. I love cutting tools in general and scissors in particular. I have many kinds of scissors with 27 pairs at last count.

nothing pithy here

Eric made some interesting comments within the context of his response to my cognitive dissonance entry but he also provided additional food for thought that I'd like to write about in the future. One intriguing idea : "Therefore, the ancientness of the apparel industry lends itself to secrecy and mysticism, and therefore may be exploited by anyone claiming to have unlocked these secrets. If it's not in the open, anyone can lay claim to having the knowledge. Nobody in the industry is likely to come out from behind closed doors to dispute them, and nobody in the general public knows enough about it to dispute them."
I agree we need a lot more transparency in the business. Without standards, nobody really knows how they stack up. That's what the entries on core sewing skills was all about; defining standards and making the information public. Everybody competes on a more level playing field. Also, I'm distressed by the lack of innovation in clothing; we're losing the skills to do the complex work we once did well. In that vein, I buy ILGWU made apparel at the thrift store; these are great samples of product quality standards we'd do well to reclaim. Some apparel industry people are really really pissed at me right now because I said something good about the union. This isn't a popularity contest; they did good work and you know it.

I think I will be writing about autism and sewing fairly soon. Based on my personal experience, I'd say there were more women with aspie traits in the sewing community than there are in the general population. While I'm not much of a role model, I get letters from sewing related people who have found out about autism because of me. Knowing a little about autism can also be helpful to DEs (designer-entrepreneurs) for a practical reason. DEs will be coming in contact with more technical people such as sewing contractors, pattern makers etc. While I'm not suggesting sewing contractors are autistic, I am saying that they tend to share some traits in that their brains are very male. It's important for DEs to learn how to navigate technical personalities (auties tend to be more technical than average). I can say that the greatest amount of difficulties between DEs and the back of the house are due to miscommunication between different thinking types. Similarly, people with autistic traits are uniquely suited to extremely detailed and demanding work and if a designer is looking to fill a job, I'd think that screening candidates to favor these traits could be a fortuitous decision. That's how you grow your own in-house expert btw.

Reading: I am very disappointed with _Leonardo Da Vinci on the Human Body_ by O'Malley & C.M. Saunders copy.1982 . Da Vinci's robots have been in the news lately so maybe Grammarcy Books thought a reprint would be fortuitous and I guess it worked. I bought it. I rarely mention this sort of stuff but I didn't like handling the pages, they felt weird. Also, there was bleed-through from the reverse side and that really irritates me with technical books as they tend to have a lot of dense small print. Anyway, rather than beefing about something so silly as the paper quality, it had the wrong title. This book should have been titled _A Discussion of all the Da Vinci Papers and Journals owned by Queen Elizabeth II_ by some British Guys. I don't mean to complain but this wasn't the "good stuff". It was not a balanced representation of Da Vinci's anatomical studies, no way. There were no proportionates, there was just a skinny-skinny of bio-mechanics (I learned why chimps are stronger than we'll ever be)...I mean, Da Vinci is the founder of Anthropometry(The science of the measure of man) as we know it. None of that was in there. Very disappointing. I think they would have been more honest to mention the book is based on limited source material. Not that I wouldn't have bought it anyway. I just wouldn't have been disappointed.

Other reading. Erich Fromm and I are not communicating well. I had pictured an intelligent personable writing style. Due to flawed expectations I ended up with word soup; my eye jumping around on the page not resting easily anywhere. There were too many complex ideas to be absorbed with the level of concentration I was prepared to expend. I put that aside.

Another book I'm reading is _Survival of the Prettiest_ by Nancy Etcoff which is wonderful. It's about the psychology of beauty and it's intelligently researched and organized. She dispells many myths. For me, it was an open book to understanding why people want to adorn themselves because this is something I don't understand very well. There are some very interesting demographics as well. While she doesn't cite any ASTM sizing studies, she does include the symmetry data from researchers that has been in the news. Very interesting read.

reading

Very often, what I'm reading fuels what I'm writing. At least over a period of time since that takes mulling. The last two things I've read are _The Zen of Motorcycle Maintenance_ and _Surely you're joking Mr Feynman_. I'm ambivalent about both. I enjoyed Zen very much but I got lost during some of Phaedrus' philosophical discussion of quality and I beg to differ that quality is lost once you begin to define it. Then again, the discussion of quality has come a long way since then (published in 1974). Also, I had hoped that throughout the narrative, his descriptives of "classical" versus "romantic" thinkers would have been better formed. I'm graceless in that I wanted the answers of dealing with dichotometric thought served piping hot and ready to eat on my platter.

Feynman's book was another story, much of it familiar, in the respect of how he thinks, how things come to him, his approach, beliefs and philosophies. In his book, I found the kind of math that I've been looking for. I passed it off to BF who's master of that dominion. It is said -in the community- that Feynman was autistic too. Well, I don't know anything about that although I have no problem seeing how entire paragraphs could be lifted from this book and stuck into an anthology of autistic writers and you'd never know the difference. I was struck with that thought as I read, his writing was no different than what I'd read from autistic writers before. I was glad he wrote about smelling; he encouraged people to try to develop their sense of smell. Being smell sensitive is fairly typical of an autistic person. I know exactly what he meant -in the differences between smells- I just never had the words to express it. I think I'd like to try his smell experiment sometime (he had some people touch books when he was out of the room and when he came back in, he'd guess who'd touched what). I have learned more about people in my life through my sense of smell than anything else. I think it could be unnerving to an NT if they were to know how much we could know about them through smell alone. In a work situation, it's easy to know who's sleeping with whom if they both smell like sex. It's not hard.

I've been looking for Eric Fromm's _Escape from Freedom_. Someone mentions that some of my answers are here. It's been harder to find although the excuse to visit used bookstores is a good one. I found another of his, on the pyschology of ethics. This is something that I've thought a lot about. I find that most people are not as honest as they think they are, or that their transgression is "okay" for whatever reason they've chosen to justify it with. I've resisted looking at it thus far but I'm expecting some commonalities with Richard Peck's _People of the Lie_. The latter is a great book btw, something doesn't have to be "big" to be evil. It's small evils that weary our days.

In the mail: received a book of Da Vinci's anatomical studies. I ordered it anticipating more details regarding proportionate studies and on a fast pass, I didn't see those either. I did see there were some comparative studies (other mammals) which is interesting but germane for my purposes. Also, Gillian's Bias Pattern Cutting which I'll review as well.

Thrift store shopping

You don't know this yet so I may as well tell you; I don't like clothes. For the most part. Actually, I don't like going through the bother of acquiring them via shopping or sewing. I'd rather prefer that they grew on bushes and one could snag what's needed in passing. The clothing I like best are items that miraculously appear. A friend mailed me a pair of cover-alls that he found in his dumpster and I wore them for years. Anyway, while my views are extreme, you'll find that garment industry people largely do not care about clothes. We are the first to cheerfully agree that we are the worst dressers. There is a reason (!) that some design houses semi-dictate the wearing of either all white or all black. It's because the designer knows we're such losers taste-wise, that we need some sort of fashion guidance. I swear. All of the garment industry people are laughing themselves sick at this point because they can't believe I had the nerve to say that. I wish you could hear them.

Anyway, I've always meant to write about a great way to teach yourself without resorting to the input of others because I went shopping for clothes today (those who know me best are minimally applauding at this point; my son hugged me saying I needed "positive reinforcement"). My favorite store is the Family Thrift Center on Alameda. The owner buys his lots from the east coast and there seems to be a lot of designer and better brands, sometimes even some vintage pieces. Anyway, sometimes I can stomach the trek there but today was more of a necessity because I'm having a clothes-crisis. For somebody with a scrawny butt, I tear out the seat of a lot of jeans. Actually, it's not my fault. It has a whole lot more to do with the fact that back pocket placement needs to be rescaled so the lower pocket corners aren't resting precisely over the area of greatest stress in lateral expansion. The underlying denim is stressed by expansion and 2 layers of denim stitched on top of it and it wasn't designed to tolerate the stress of movement and application. I mean, that's just simple ergonomics. Anyway, before I was justifying my wearing of butt-ripped pants, I was saying that the basic premise is that you go to your local thrift store and find garments that contain elements that you'd like to master. Or, not that you necessarily choose to master at this time -you have to mull things over- but you're curious as to how it's done. This is the first step in what's known as reverse engineering.

Now, you have to be mindful to find what you need. It's no good to study a poor example and taste has nothing to do with it. I just say that because I've done this thrift-store exercise with designers and they tend to pick the wrong things. First off, Do Not Buy Something Because You Like It. That's entirely the wrong reason. The first thing you should buy is a man's suitcoat or sportcoat and it must have a full lining. Sportcoats with only a half lining will not teach you anything about bagging a jacket so it's a waste of your time. For this exercise, you want to get an older men's jacket, something made between 1950-1975. Check all of the labels and tags. If you can find sew-in labels with the ILGWU crest (international ladies garment worker's union) , that's a definite consideration. If you can find a jacket made in Hong Kong -of any time period- that's another keeper. It doesn't matter if the fabric is ugly, has moth holes in it or whatever, just buy it. You can always wash it or have it drycleaned before you work with it. I usually wash them first, cold water, no dryer if they're wool (stretch it out a bit while it's still damp). If they're silk, just wash them. I don't know why people freak out about washing silk when there's nothing delicate about it. Ounce for ounce, it's the strongest fiber there is. As a matter of fact, the US Airforce uses silk cables to brake fighter jets when they land on aircraft carriers. The only delicate thing about silk are the dyes. At the converter's, the fabrics aren't always processed to the extent that the dyes no longer bleed.

Try to select a jacket with only one vent in the back. Double vented styles are too confusing to read because there's so much going on. Also, don't get a double breasted jacket for the same reason. If you select a style without a back vent, it should have a sewn in lining. By that I mean the lining and shell must be joined rather than each layer hemmed independent of the other.

When you're ready to work with the jacket, turn it inside out. Along the back seam of one sleeve, you'll find the closure seam. Open that. Reach your arm into the jacket, grab a handful of the outer fabric and pull it through the opened seam. Work it through slowly. I know that at times it will seem that you can't get it to come through the sleeve opening but keep working it. It won't fall apart and the clothing police will not come and get you for this. While you're pulling the thing through, you'll find "tacks". This is where the lining has been tacked into place within the seam allowances of the shell fabric. You'll find tacks at the lowest part of the armhole, more tacks located an inch or two above the hem, and then some around the collar area. There may also be tacks where the shoulder seam hits the sleeve cap. You can take out all of the tacks if you think they're getting in your way but you don't really need to. When the jacket was made, the tacks were sewn before the jacket was turned so you should be able to reverse the operation. Anyway, once the thing's been turned, I know you'll find plenty of interesting things to look at!

These are some of the things you'll find inside that you may want to adopt:
You'll find wigan, a bias-cut strip of hair canvas in the sleeve hem. Depending on the styling of the jacket, you may find this in the jacket hem too.
You'll notice the entire front of the jacket is either fused or interfaced.
The back shoulder, back neck and back armhole areas will be fused or interfaced in (usually) one continuous piece.
Any hem area will be fused (where you'll find the wigan).
Pockets: you will note there's an extra layer of interfacing in the pocket inset area. Also, the seam allowances of the pocket welts may be anchored to a seam off to either side with a strip of hair canvas. I never worked at a company that did this step but I like it. I think it makes for a more stable pocket.

You'll probably find a whole lot of stuff going on in the front shoulder area and right next to that is a bunch of sleeve stuff. The layers in the front shoulder are a chest piece, and no you can't buy some too because each factory has to make them specific to each armhole/chest of each style and for each size no less. Making the patterns for chest pads was one of the things I liked least, 3 layers of stuff to make one component and each layer had to be a different size so it'd stack correctly (snore). The sleeve is easier. You'll find a strip of flannel, lamb's wool or something similar sewn into the sleeve cap. You may notice that the strip looks as though it might not have been sewn in "correctly"...it was, we do that on purpose. The shoulder pad will also be stitched to the seam allowance of the sleeve cap (the sleevehead is sewn in first). The shoulder pad is usually not sewn to the shoulder seam which is another great idea to copy. That's all I can think of for now.

If you do all of that, you'll learn more than just our secrets. You'll learn one I could never hope to teach you. Promise. I expect that some will figure that out before they start.

Back to something really important, like resolving my clothing crisis. I'm thinking I should pander toward the designers I already know -after all- what's a blog without blegging? I think they should just send me clothes so I can dispense with the formality of shopping entirely, don't you agree? Okay then, send clothes, but no yellow/green and nothing strapless. Please.

The cognitive dissonance of experts

I've been spending a lot of time learning about cognition, learning and unlearning because I feel like I've spent most of the past 10 years refuting the vast majority of anything sewing, pattern making or industry related that people ask me. Most of the people I've spoken with come with a set of beliefs and expectations that they've developed over the years and it's extremely difficult to penetrate beyond this enormously heavy curtain that they leave lying between the window of their social brain and their silent analytical brain. Paradoxically, it's more difficult to penetrate those who are most experienced, not those who are new. People who are just learning are the easiest to work with because they haven't invested a lot of time or money into one way of thinking because they're still sampling the breadth of what's possible to know. It's like a big ideas and projects smorgasbord for them and they're eager to taste it all.

I've learned there's such a thing as "cognitive dissonance". Cognitive dissonance explains why "experts" through out history have -when confronted with ideas that are either new, or new to them- use negative or reductionist behaviors to refute the challenge to their existing belief system. For example, maybe you've heard the news that ulcers are not caused by stress. It's been proven irrefutably that ulcers are caused by a bacteria and are easily treated with antibiotics. That's why all of the advertising for over-the-counter ulcer treatments have changed. Now, none of those advertisements ever mention ulcers. These same products now stress relief from gas. The part of the story you may not have heard was that the researcher who figured this out --studied it extensively, did all of the lab research, it was reproducible-- spent 10 long YEARS trying to get other researchers to even look at his work. But they wouldn't even look at it, much less try to reproduce the same results using controlled experiments. Still worse, he was ridiculed.

Now, about cognitve dissonance, experts and sewing. I know something about sewing so I've gravitated towards people with the same interests and in some cases there have been discussions and I've gone to great lengths to explain the workings and logic of things, just assuming that when confronted with the facts, people will go with reality. Instead, I have been continually surprised by the level of antagonism and rejection I've gotten from people. I found that logic or the "correctness" of my answers had nothing to do with it. People's responses to factual information was governed by emotion which is considered "normal" (it seems abnormal to me but then, I'm autistic). This is cognitive dissonance.

According to Aronson (1996), when people are confronted with opposing beliefs or ones incompatible with their own, they are likely to ignore or negate that belief. They do this in order to convince themselves that they have not behaved foolishly by committing to false beliefs. To assure themselves that they have been wise in supporting their position, they often convince themselves that those who oppose that position are foolish and truly objects for contempt and derision (Aronson, 1996 p.184-8).

Okay, I can deal with the factual existance of an arbitrary, counterproductive, behavioral response and not take it personally but what I want to know is, how can I do something about it and be productive in spite of it? What strategies exist to lower people's defenses to new information? How can one "get someone to listen"? How can one get another "expert" to advance in their professional development by considering information to which they'd not had previous access? If doctors won't listen to listen to another doctor, I have few expectations among my own. Still, I'm resilient and I don't give up. I'm looking for real wisdom so I turn to -a most logical source- Robert Pirsig, author of _The Zen of Motorcycle Maintenance_

Pirsig -whilst in the shadow of Phaedrus- was obsessed with this sort of brain-lock. He sought to identify it, explain it and ultimately, to work around it. He stuck this problem in a broad category he called "gumption traps" which I've loosely defined here as ways that we manage to mess up our own lives with no assistance from anyone (if you could kick the butt of the person most responsible for the problems in your life, you wouldn't be able to sit down for a month). He subcategorized cognitive dissonance -an unknown term at the time- as "value rigidity", a mostly illogical/counterproductive inabiltiy to grow beyond one's current competence through the dysfunctional deployment of mostly self-denial and similar psychological strategies. These days we'd just call those behaviors civil aggression, passive-aggressive, manipulative, or intentionally undermining another because it's not enough to refute the ideas...the "expert" also becomes defensive against the person who brings the new ideas. An example of this would be if I were to say that Pirsig's instruction regarding the method of dismantling subassemblies was "wrong" because the man -obviously- never owned a cat (any cat-owning mechanically inclined person would describe Pirsig's advice as a deliberately inciteful way to store and display parts cum cat toys). The value of Pirsig's advice is not measured by something so inconsequential as the differences in our lifestyle choices when the overall strategy is a most productive and effective one. BTW, it's worth buying the book even if you only read chapters 25 and 26. Just substitute the appropriate sewing term as needed.

"The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best -- and therefore never scrutinize or question." -Stephen Jay Gould

Still, well before I became interested in cognitive behaviors, I was challenged by what it was that defined an "expert". How can one know the expert is an expert if one is not an expert? And also, at which point does someone realize that they are an expert? And lastly, assuming one is an expert, how does one know what they know? How do they know it is "enough", enough to be an expert? These were questions that bothered me. I'd been looking for experts who could answer the questions I had but that was difficult because it was almost impossible to find someone who even understood what the problems I was describing were. I haven't found anyone yet. That's really when I lost faith in experts. Since I'm not an expert, I had a lot of expectations from them. I was disappointed for awhile because I couldn't find an expert so I thought that just talking about these ideas could be a good strategy because it'd bring new people out of the woodwork -who weren't famous- and who might have something to add to the debate. If anything, I was hoping their questions would be better than my own.

Then, another cultural change was brewing. Magazines specific to method and process of sewing for enthusiasts became a force. Personalities and products were needed to drive, reinforce and sustain this niche interest largely by less than accurate or scholarly-suspect work. This 'information' was printed, disseminated and digested by a willing audience and propogated by leaders who'd similarly "invested" in the information, further reproducing and reinforcing it with their own books. This was disturbing. Just because something is popular or everyone believes it, doesn't make it true.

For example, it was...mind-bending to read articles written by experts who'd write about how a given designer had a nifty way to sew something and then the expert would explain how you could do it too. The first time I read one of these, I guffawed with laughter, I couldn't help it! See, on this end, we all know that designers don't sew, they are the last person you want to ask about how to do something because they don't know. They're the ones who come to us (and I don't care if you don't believe me, ask any pattern maker, production manager or designer, in any factory anywhere in the world; even Chanel said the only designer she ever knew who could sew or cut a pattern with any competence was Balenciaga). Anyway, the process described in the article was wrong because that's not how the work was accomplished, not even close. Then, I started to think that maybe the designer (Claude Montana) would sue the magazine (Threads) because the author of the article made the company look like grossly incompetent idiots because it was a really lame, overly labor intensive way to do it -with worse results- than the way that they were really doing it. If somebody wrote an article saying I sewed like that, I'd assume they were deliberately trying to ruin my reputation and make me look like an idiot when a decent sample maker would know better than that-no expert needed. I don't know why these authors just don't ask. They don't, you know. Reading their articles you'd think they were buddy-buddy with the designer but nothing could be farther from the truth. They don't ask the designer 'cause they're chicken. And I know that because a designer would take a call like that because it's interesting, it's different. They are far more approachable than you know. For example, a lot of famous people are listed in the public phone directory, they don't have unpublished numbers. It's just that people assume their numbers are non-published so they never bother to look to call them.

Then I wondered if the article's author wrote the wrong information on purpose but I couldn't figure out what the motivation for that was either. It was all so very perplexing. I was certain the magazine would catch the oversight and print the process correction in their next issue but it never happened! Not only that, but they printed even more articles like the one I'd read. I was absolutely s t u n n e d. When I said as much to others (who didn't know any real life designers) they insisted that designers could sew and then I just began to wonder if I was stuck catty-corner parked into some kind of parallel universe where newtonian physics didn't apply. In my world, designers didn't even have sewing machines because they're mostly afraid of them, so how could do they sew anything when they were too afraid to own a sewing machine? They're generalists, not technicians and specialists. Usually you can train a designer to do something simple like draw up seam specifications or provide a correct technical sketch if you give them a baseline template with practical examples of each. I doubt that they were just pretending not to know the difference between a zig-zag stitch and an overlock. And it's not that designers are stupid people for not knowing how to sew because that's not their job -according to industry standards- not yours. Not only that, a designer would get fired if they did do the sort of things that home sewers expect of them, say, altering a pattern without supervision or oversight. It's only in the world of homesewing that designers are expected to know how to sew and sew well.

Still, I was willing to assume I'd overlooked the sewing knowledge that was purportedly being hoarded by designers, so I started asking them. When a designer called me, it was on my list of things to ask, as sort of an aside. The responses I got were varied. Some designers laughed out loud and said that's why they'd hired me, some became a bit defensive and asked if I were trying to "make a point" and still others laughed and said, "I used to think I could sew before I got into this. I just had no idea what there was to know". In my quest, I did find one designer who could sew as well as I could. And cut her own production-ready patterns (she'd been a production pattern maker at Evan Picone for 13 years). So, I can literally count on one hand, the number of designers that I know or know of, who know enough to write those articles and still have 3 fingers and a thumb left over.

At some point I realized the hobbist press was off on its own parallel-universe tangent and stopped looking for answers there. Back on my end of things, I continued looking. This is when I began to reproduce the drafts or experiments of people who'd written the books. Unfortunately, my results didn't look anything like theirs so it was back to the drawing board for years. and years and years of drafting the same problem over and over again for the umpteenth time when finally, a silent voice I'd never heard before said, "maybe the book is wrong". It was a quiet still little voice with nothing to prove and I was absolutely shocked. It changed my life. I feel like I began to catch up quickly then.

I realized -from an indepth survey of available books- that a lot of authors had copied off of each other. That one author (as far as I could tell) made one error which was then reproduced by an author in a subsequent generation. Even tho the book may have illustrated the draft, the pieces would not end up looking like the samples in the book. I started doing quarter scale proofs. I learned the authors merely illustrated the draft but they did not prove it. After years of this, reality sunk in. All bet were off from anyone and anywhere regardless of prominance or preeminance.

And that's where I am now. While I know enough to know that I don't know anything, I do know enough to know whether you know anything too because I'm starting to be able to grasp just what it is that I don't know. So, if you reject me, belittle me, ridicule or humiliate me or use any number of neurotic, unhealthy psychological behaviors, you're not using science at all; this is a personal-emotional issue for you. Let's assume you have the facts, if you're right, you don't need to get personal about it when you can just as easily prove it. And I hope you are right- because then maybe you'll help me. I have plenty of questions.

Sewing anxiety, avoidance and fears

Everybody has a sewing bug-a-boo; something they dread doing in sewing or in the process of sewing. I collect these, so post yours if you care to.
My least liked task is cutting and marking, particularly dressweight fabrics cut on the bias. I know this can be managed with a lot of weights but that doesn't keep me from wishing I had a vacuum table. I can say (emphatically) that sewing bias seams is easier if the cutting is precise.

While I'm thinking of it -fyi- bias does not need a french seam because it won't ravel. Only silk cut on the straight of grain needs an enclosed seam.

Core sewing skills

10) Joining a straight length of goods to a curved length of goods. The rule of thumb for this is to have the straighter piece on top. It's easier to position the straight piece in accordance with the curved line underneath.
11) Joining 2 oppositionally curved pieces.
12) Joining goods of different lengths together. The rule of thumb for this operation is to have the shorter piece on top, slightly stretching it to match the piece below. This is also a skill that a positioning exercise could improve.
13) Sewing a seam in which the cut edges are not aligned. An example of this is a flat felled seam. In forming this seam via single-needle, two passes are required to finish the seam. In the first seam, the goods are laid wrong sides together with one seam allowance extending beyond the other by 1/4". The second seam is created by rolling the seam over, turning under the wider seam allowance and stitching into place. The tricky part is aligning the two pieces so that the 1/4" overhang is consistent through out the seam.
14) Sewing a line of stitching along a circular edge.
15) Joining 2 pieces with circular edges together.
16) Manually forming and then stitching a hem along a circular cut edge.

What are the core skills of sewing?

What are the core skills of sewing that can be defined as standards of desired skill acquisition? I am deliberately setting aside -for the moment- the related mechanical positioning, rhythym, tempo, fluidity of sewing (in a continual process) things largely comprised of experience, practice and the development of muscle memory. Once these are defined, it's easier to teach the specified tasks. Which processes are simpler and which are more complex? Here's a rough outline and not necessarily in order of difficulty or complexity:

1. Sewing a straight line along a given edge with uniform stitching from the edge of the goods.
2. As above but with two layers of goods.

#2 may seem overly simplistic but consider two equal lengths of bias cut goods. If one does not position the two layers of bias goods evenly, the goods "grow" in length the further along the seam one goes. Sewing a 1/4 or 3/8 seam is much more difficult than sewing a 1" seam allowance as there is greater grain stability the farther in from the cut edge that one sews. This applies to bias goods only! Goods on the straight of grain are more easily sewn with smaller seam allowances. This is not to say that I don't think one can develop the skill of sewing small seam allowances on bias. I usually use 1/4" particularly when dot-to-dot skill (sewing a gusset, see #5 below) is required.

If one were to think of it, one could add the concept of sewing two edges of striped or plaid fabrics together so that the stripes are matched evenly across the seam as another example of a core sewing skill but this is not a sewing skill per se, regardless that the seam is actualized at that time. Having sewing operators to sew stripes neatly is rarely a concern in a good factory because the required controls -the accurate cutting of the goods- was done well before it got near the sewing line. In the factory, the seam quality of matched stripes is not governed by stitchers! It is designed into the pattern (a precise match stripe is drafted and marked on the pattern piece) and the matching of the seam is dependent upon the pattern grader following that match point, then the marker maker who must communicate the lay-out of fabric repeat to the cutting department etc. etc. Sewing operators have little to no control over how the goods are cut; it's unfair to blame them for errors in the process that preceded them. Just because they had it last, and the proof is easily demonstrable then, doesn't mean they are to blame.

3. Sewing a simple line with 2 layers of goods of different fabrics, i.e. a shell fabric and a lining fabric. This is more difficult to do on home sewing machines as they lack the pressure of industrial machines to keep the goods aligned. Similarly, it's more difficult to sew the tape of zippers to lengths of dress-weight goods and for the same reasons. This is less challenging in industrial environments as the dressweight goods are usually stabilized with a fusible interfacing in the zipper inset area. In other words, successfully sewing a zipper is dependent upon processes prior to the initiation of sewing; a good result is dependent on what happened to the goods before a stitcher got anywhere near the goods. A pattern for the fusible had to have been made beforehand, graded, cut, paired with the commensurate shell pieces, fused and then resorted into bundles appropriate to the sewing process order.

4. The skill of sewing from one fixed point to another, dot-to-dot, along a defined edge.
5. As above but with two layers of goods.
6. As above but with two layers of differing goods. An example would be that of the back "V" -at garment edge- on a back vest waist. Not only must the dot-to-dot points be precise but the differing weights of the shell of the vest and the lining must be managed.

7. The skill of sewing from one fixed point to another, dot-to-dot, on the interior of a piece, say along the placement lines of a welt pocket. It's more difficult to sew evenly on the inside of a body of goods -rather than a seam allowance edge- as more skill is needed for the work to lie flat and correctly aligned.
8. As above but with two layers of goods, the dot of each end sewing point of one layer to be correctly aligned with the dots of the underlying layer.
9. As above but with two layers of differing fabrics. Say a welt leather pocket on a wool coat.

Notes on 7-9: again, a commercial environment manages this differently and well before it gets near a sewing operator. As in welt pockets, the shell side (the side to 'receive' the pocket), is fused from the underside (wrong side of goods) at least one inch away from the area to be sewn all the way around. The entire area is stabilized prior to stitching. Considering the known tendency of manufacturers to guard against waste, the additional use of goods and process -fusing for one- must mean that successful completion of the job (the welt pocket) is highly dependent upon stabilization and worthy of increased cost of goods (more interfacing), design (pattern) and additional processes and steps (fusing and doing so within a precise target area). Being able to do the latter consistently btw, is a process that's not well known to home sewers. This usually requires a placement guide made by the patternmaker before hand. The concept of guides -a pattern piece not used to cut out goods but designed to mark them- is largely unknown to home sewers.

that jpeg is colita btw

and while she's absolutely adorable -a little manx- she's also a little witch and the trial and terror of my days. Photo by Susan Gowin.