The Designer's Network Newsletter

I sounded pissed

2006-04-04T12:34:00.000-07:00

I haven't been here in awhile; reading those last two entries, it sounds like I was pissed. Better go to Fashion-Incubator where I post (and sometimes get pissed) daily. It's a huge site. You'll love it. It's probably the most popular* blog on clothing design and manufacturing for start ups on the whole world wide web!

*Okay, so it's the only blog on the topic but that doesn't mean it's not good.

My real blog

2005-10-24T12:16:00.001-07:00

If you've followed a link off of my blogger profile, this is not my "real" blog. To get the skinny on lean manufacturing in the apparel industry, go to Fashion-Incubator.com which has loads of advice, tutorials and links -all free!- and just say no to greedy manglement consultants who are using Lean as just another catch-phrase cash-cow program they can use to expand their client base. I'd link to the specific offending party but I don't care to up their page ranking.

Fashion blogging goes corporate

2005-10-13T15:19:00.000-07:00

How irritating...how does a new blog with exactly 4 posts get to the top of Blogger's search blog feature? Worse, it's just a vehicle to draw clientele...very little content and I notice the comment I posted on their site hasn't been published yet. Seems rather contrary to the spirit of blogging if you ask me. Hmmm. You'd think blogger would beyond accepting payment for placement. Whatever, I suppose I shouldn't kvetch since my blog Fashion-Incubator is still within the top three listed but still, blogger lists my last post as October 4th. October 4th? Good grief. I post everyday, monday thru friday. Well, at least Google's blog search feature is working well.
Anyhow...this week's postings from Fashion-Incubator are:
Monday-holiday. I took the day off.
Tuesday: Are you a target? How to avoid having your products knocked off by a knock off artist.
Wednesday: Find a sales rep -circuitously How to find a sales rep without a lot of money
Thursday: Are you a target? pt.2 The other side of knock-offs...maybe you do want to be a target. Here's why.
Friday -TBA but I have two posts penciled in. One is from my co-author Miracle Wanzo who's adding to my post about getting a sales rep and then another from a contributor out of Canada. David Rushton is a sewing contractor and he'll be giving those of us in the lower 48 the skinny on the ins and outs of sourcing sewing production there.

How to hire a pattern grading service

2005-09-23T16:13:00.000-07:00

This post comes in response to a posting on an internet board from a woman (who wishes to remain anonymous) who was charged outrageous fees for pattern grading. She paid $960 to have 6 pieces graded in five sizes. That's right, $960! The customary price from any professional grading service is $50 at most, so I was beyond outrage when I heard this. She was unaware of acceptable industry pricing and I publish this with the hopes of preventing someone else from being taken advantage of in a similar way.

The following material is reprinted from The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Sewn Product Manufacturing ©1998 by Kathleen Fasanella (me). All Rights Reserved. All of the original material is included with minor amendments, having been re-formatted for easier reading on your screen. In addition, I've added a couple of reputable pattern companies you can contact if you need to hire someone and I will be adding to the list. You can order a copy of this book here or by writing me. Depending on reader feedback and demand (and hopefully donations), I will consider writing a follow-up post that deals specifically with the issues faced by designers of home-sewing patterns due to ludicrous and outrageous grading prices from certain companies. I define "ludicrous and outrageous" as grading prices that are ten to twenty times the average going rate of industry professionals.

How to Hire a Grading Service
"...Sometimes a designer thinks we'll grade their design with a B- or C+..."
When a new designer needs technical help in design creation, they rarely know the steps it takes for a design to come to life. When discussing grading with new designers, they may become very quiet and then a "I don't have a clue look" crosses their faces. Designers know a pattern needs to be developed, but rarely think about the range of sizes a pattern may need.

So what is grading? Grading is increasing and/or decreasing pattern sizes proportionate to specific instructions. Since the best client is an educated client, a designer should learn more about grading. Designers can learn about grading from books such as Professional Pattern Grading for Women's, Men's and Children's Apparel by Handford through college courses or even from pattern graders. Learning will help anyone understand the precision of grading and help designers to make educated decisions as to how the work needs to be done.

Continue reading "How to hire a pattern grading service" at Fashion-Incubator.com

Just stopping by...

2005-09-07T14:10:00.000-07:00

This service is still alive. To read the daily posts to this blog, go to Fashion-incubator. I probably would've posted sooner but I moved. My new contact info is:
Kathleen Fasanella
1149 W Picacho
Las Cruces NM 88005
Tel: 505-525-1577

Fashion-Incubator.com updates

2005-08-10T13:16:00.000-07:00

Is anybody still coming here? Here are all of the recent posts you can find at the new blog location at Fashion-Incubator:
* Why We Buy
* Wanna buy some loot?
* Couture Pattern Puzzles
* Marriage by Movable Type
* May I suggest FedEx?
* Management Software
* Moving
* Pattern puzzle #1
* Sweatshop study
* Pattern Puzzles
* 22692 Bagging Tutorial #2
* 22692 Bagging Tutorial #1
* Site Stats
* Wholesale Fabric Show
* CAFTA

So come on over. Check out the bulletin board too.

Is anybody still coming here?

2005-07-13T18:05:00.000-07:00

I moved the party over to the new blog site at Fashion-Incubator and I'm kind of getting tired of coming over here to put up sporadic posts just so that somebody won't think this blog project has been abandoned entirely. Anything you can find here is over there except better and more of it. Maybe I'll just come over to repaste this message over and over so you can see the server is still alive...

How quickly we forget

2005-07-08T17:16:00.000-07:00

In my warehouse cleansing frenzy, I found an old dress that I'd saved for demonstration purposes.

The thing is mentionable because it won third place in an annual design contest -earning a scholarship- and it's horrible! Don't get me wrong, the designer had a cute idea but the quality is appallingly bad. It's distressingly bad. It's awful! One can only imagine how horrible the 4th and 5th place winners were. I save this as a reminder of what design schools put out and/or put up with; it depends on your perspective. Anyway, here's the list of this student's sins:

Continue reading at Fashion-Incubator...

Style 22692 Bundling & Bagging

2005-07-07T18:12:00.000-07:00

This serves as a brief introduction to Bundling. Bundling is how large quantities of goods are managed in many companies. This company bundled styles in quantities of 10 but it's just as common to find bundles quanitified by the dozen. That's a preference you'll have to establish when managing the sewing end of your production. May I recommend units of 10? It simplifies the math.

This is a bundle of cut jackets ready to be sewn. Note how all the pieces are lain neatly with the ticket edges readily visible.

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Continue reading at Fashion-Incubator...

Leather dies style 21206

2005-07-06T17:06:00.000-07:00

Style #21206:

Much of what I need to get rid of is stuff I've collected for the purposes of demonstration. This post will detail a set of leather dies I have for sale. My critique of the pattern follows. Why I'd ever think anyone would ever consider buying this is beyond even me. Still, I got the dies for the purposes of demonstration which follows.

Continue reading at Fashion-Incubator...

Independence day?

2005-07-04T21:30:00.000-07:00

I was a little bummed to read in yesterday's Las Cruces Sun-News that Betsy Ross was not likely to have been the original flag-maker we'd all been led to believe. According to Leepson's book Flag: An American Biography, the original flagmaker is unknown but it's original designer was Francis Hopkinson, attorney and designer of seals and emblems. What is evident is that several flags were made by several people.

Continue reading at Fashion-Incubator

Rohr's Pattern Drafting Books

2005-06-30T09:14:00.000-07:00

I should mention that I am currently in negotiations with the copyright holder of Michael Rohr's pattern drafting books in an effort to reprint the books. We are uncertain as to the current demand for these texts as they've been unavailable for so long.

The current proposal is reprinting the red book Pattern Drafting & Grading: Women's and Misses Garment Design into one volume and the remaining 3 smaller books Grading Women's and Misses Garment Design, Pattern Drafting: Children's Garment Design and Draping: Women's and Misses Garment Design, into a second combined volume. The proposed retail price for each volume is $39.95.

If you know of these books and similarly agree these are worth exposing to a new generation, you can have a direct effect in this effort if you'd write me and tell others of this potentiality. The more feedback I get, the more likely it is that this can happen. Spread the word.

The myth of vanity sizing

2005-06-29T19:30:00.000-07:00

I've been avoiding the topic of fit and sizing -which aren't the same thing- for a very long time. I haven't written about it because a truly comprehensive discussion is very controversial and guaranteed to piss off everyone from consumers to manufacturers. The problems associated with issues of poor fit or standard sizes are so complex that they cannot but include everyone in the user-producer stream. This isn't an issue of spreading blame; it's more complex than that. The biggest problem is expectations and beliefs.

First of all, there's no such thing as vanity sizing. Really. I could write an entire book about why there's no such thing as vanity sizing. That is not to say there are no problems with sizing but vanity is the least of them. It's best to understand the nature of sizing before we go crazy and adopt national sizing standards. People are so different from one another that it is an unreasonable expectation that our clothes should be sized uniformly. The day that we should only have one size "medium" across all manufacturers is also the day we should only need an identical dose of an identical medicine for an identical medical problem. Humans are unique.

Continue reading at Fashion-Incubator...

This changes everything

2005-06-28T15:37:00.000-07:00

With the news of $60 a barrel of crude, this post couldn't be more timely. I think most people have traditionally viewed sustainable development strategies as lower grade trade offs for things they'd rather have and most people just don't want to do without. For example, vegetarianism is often seen as the consumption of twigs and berries when one might rather eat steak. My visit to Angel's Nest outside of Taos NM demonstrates that recent ecological innovations are briskly shutting all of that thinking aside. Consider the Hummer Limo we saw at Angel's Nest that runs exclusively on hydrogen and biodiesel:

Continue reading at Fashion-Incubator

Home again

2005-06-27T16:43:00.000-07:00

I'm back! Boy, did we have loads of fun which I'll tell you about later. I took photos of some cool ideas to share regarding sustainability. Don't know that I ever mentioned it but I've idly toyed with the idea of getting a degree in environmental engineering. May as well considering this blogging gig doesn't pay. By that I mean I'm very disappointed that the last tutorial didn't seem to be very popular considering I only got one tip. One. Just one. As any of you know well, it's hard to justify doing something if you're not getting paid to do it. Obviously, it's not the value I'd assumed it was. Oh well, live and learn. Maybe I'll get into building bigger things.

Below are the only recreational photos I'm sharing of the Taos Solar Festival. Directly below is me with the solar tree at the Taos visitors center.

Continue reading at Fashion-Incubator...

Welt pocket construction

2005-06-23T16:13:00.000-07:00

Picking up where I left off yesterday, sew both folds into place with 1/4" seam allowance.

Here you can see one side is done:

Continue reading at Fashion-Incubator...

Marking & Cutting

2005-06-22T06:37:00.000-07:00

You have to know this before you get anywhere near the welt pocket project. When you’re learning something new, everything can seem equally important and you may not be sure which concepts are your real priorities. Another problem is if you mis-prioritize something here because it is similar to something you already know or you think that you already know how to do it well. Whatever. I don’t know how to make these things stand out in your mind but if you don’t read another thing, read this: Your greatest priority is to mark and cut correctly which -most likely- is not the way you learned to do it.

Continue reading at Fashion-Incubator...

Zippered welt pockets

2005-06-17T16:44:00.000-07:00

My next on-line tutorial will be how to make zippered welt pockets. In order to do this project, you'll first have to learn how to make welt pockets. The method I will show you follows how a welt pocket machine -usually called a Reece machine because it's made by Reece -since merged with AMF and now known as AMF Reece- but still called a reece machine (a pdf product brochure is here). By the way, the name we use to describe this kind of pocket in the trade, is also reece. We don't call these welt pockets. We call them reece pockets. The pattern is labeled that way and if you asked somebody for a reece, they'd know you meant a cut rectangle measuring 8" x 3" because it only takes one piece of fabric to make these, not two (in manufacturing, you have to make your pattern pieces specific to the machine being used and this is one example of that). The underwelt for a reece is 8" x 2 1/2". Oh, and we do call an under welt an under welt. I know that's not logical but why does everybody assume the trade always does things logically? Believe me, I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.

Continue reading "Zippered welt pockets" at Fashion-Incubator...

Misc Pattern Tip: trim darts

2005-06-14T22:08:00.000-07:00

On an entirely unrelated note other than that this is a blog and I therefore must post the obligatory cat-picture, below you'll see an impediment to my productivity. Actually, his name is Right (his littermate's name is Left). Right likes to help with pattern projects. Colita is my usual helper but she only does sewing.

Continue reading Misc Pattern tip: trim darts on Fashion Incubator....

Discussion Forum

2005-06-13T15:28:00.000-07:00

Today's my birthday but you're the one getting a present! The discussion forum (bulletin board) is configured and all ready to go. You'll have to log-in to post comments and questions. For now, the bulletin board is open to anyone although I do plan on making the resource section of each topic area (sources for fabrics, contractors and reps) limited to members only in the future. Please tell all your friends; the board needs posts! The major topic areas (feel free to suggest others) are:

Continue reading Discussion Forum at Fashion-Incubator

Vintage German Patterns

2005-06-11T13:07:00.000-07:00

Leipzig, Germany 1934 Style 74821

I'm a pattern maker personally and professionally so it shouldn't surprise anyone that I also collect them. I collect vintage and foreign patterns, and vintage and foreign pattern and sewing books. In fact, I've overcollected to the tune of 8 boxes of patterns I'm intending to sell on ebay someday. Anyway, I found an amazing resource I have to tell you about. There's a lady in OK who is selling copies of old german pattern magazines, pre WW2 and I bought a few (present for my b-day!). If you're into that sort of thing, you may want to check it out too. She has a store on ebay called Memory Lane Treasures. Here's a sample style:

Continue reading at Fashion-Incubator....

Dallas and vionnet (updates)

2005-06-07T21:24:00.000-07:00

I should just set up a redirect for this blog so you guys land over there instead of here cause that's where the goodies are.

yep, it's fashion-incubator.

you can now subscribe, do full text searching, add your 2 cents. check it out.

I may end up in dallas and you may want to go too.

oh! and it seem's vionnet's back in print!

Fashion-Incubator updates

2005-06-02T15:43:00.000-07:00

I'm not crossposting material from the new blog location as frequently. The most recent posts to read at Fashion-Incubator are:

Centered Zipper Template
Centered Zipper Construction
Seam Class Specifications
Bloggers, mothers and tommys run amok
RAQ: Rarely Asked Questions

Lapped zipper specs

2005-05-24T18:51:00.000-07:00

Regarding the drafting specifications for the lapped zipper, all measures are made from the center back seam line (designated as CB). CB is the zero point. You'll add allowances from the zero point of CB.

Normally a garment has a CB seam allowance of 3/8" and this is no exception in the area that lies beneath the zipper inset area. So excepting the length of the zipper inset, the seam allowance is 3/8".

Continue reading "Lapped zipper specs" at Fashion-Incubator

Lapped zipper template

2005-05-20T11:11:00.000-07:00

Continuing in the process review series of the faulty zipper insertion, I've finished drafting and sewing the correction for the lapped zipper application. The sample pattern uses a 7" plastic coil. By the way, this pattern won't work for separating zippers because those are different.

Before you can sew this up, you'll need to download the pdf pattern templates. Print these out full size; they should fit neatly on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper (you'll need 3 sheets). Later today you'll find the step by step sewing instructions once I finish editing the photos. For now, prepare your pattern.

Continue reading at Fashion-Incubator...