During my mentor meeting today, Ms. Lasher and I had a short chat about my upcoming first day of my apprenticeship at Sew Green. We decided that since we wouldn't know about how the first day went until the next day, that we would meet Monday of next week in order to have a full meeting.
My first day at Sew Green!
I walked into the room, and was immediately greeted by smiling faces and a warm, welcoming classroom. I finally got to meet Wendy, and Autumn was there too. I recognized Gir, a former student of Ithaca High School, who is now an apprentice of Sew-Green. Everyone was hard at work on their sewing machines, making drawstring bags to be sent to school children in third world countries. Sew Green often has projects aimed at donating to charities. For example, Sew Green once made dresses for little girls in Africa. It's quite touching to know that the bag you were sewing for practice wasn't just going to be a wasted effort, but aftually help someone.
Right off the bat, Gir, gave me a very entertaining run-down of sewing machine, telling me all of the parts of the machine, and how they worked. Unfortunately, in my later efforts on making bags, I forgot the sheet with all the names of the parts. I will have to remember to get it at my next visit. However, the names were quite straight forward, and I remembered many of them from my sewing lessons when I was little.
As soon as my intro was finished, I was set to work, making bags. I made three bags in 1.5 hours, which is VERY slow compared to some of the other sewers, however, I got the hang of sewing again (for the most part!) I realized that my lines have become very messy, and since we had to sew next to a very thin edge, I was having a lot of trouble. I feel like I would have had an easier time on my own machine, but I am really rusty, so who knows. In the future, perhaps I will pin my seams while I am practicing, and gradually reduce the number of pins, in order to have my edges line up.
At the end of the day, I got some one on one time with Autumn. She looked over my sketches, and gave some comments. One was whether or not I wanted a theme. Usually fashion lines have one piece that ties everything together. I need to decide what that will be. Another was that, although I have labeled my sketches, I need to draw flat sketches of the clothes (as though they are lying on the ground) with all the seams shown, and lots of detail. I'm glad I have a lot of space in my sketchbook! Finally, I should be designing while keeping in mind that the more I can alter the same pattern and come up with something new, the better, that way we can work with the same pattern and add stuff on.
Next week, Autumn said that I we would be able to start draping my first dress! I'm really excited. We're going to start with the easiest piece, which is the dress with the coral painted on it (see Sketchbook). In the meantime, I have to expand my sketches with the flat sketches, and come up with some more designs and options so that we have many to pick and choose from. Right now I have 3 favorites. Obviously, since I plan to have 5 outfits, I need some more sketches.
One last thing that I forgot...
We talked about the cost of cloth. Cloth can be really expensive, and currently I don't know how I'm going to get the money. I was thinking of dipping into my wages, but I really want to save up for college. Right now, that's my back up plan. I get 40% off all the merchandise in the Sew-Green store, since I'm an apprentice. That's HUGE! I have yet to explore the store, but that will definately be a way to save money. Also, I'm currently desiging clothes with realtively low cost materials (muslin, stretch cotton, etc).
One idea I had for raising money would be to get my models to sponser me. Since the clothes would be made to fit them, they could pick which outfit they want to model, and bid for it. The highest bidder gets to model the outfit, and then keep it so long as they pay for all of the materials. This would give me a budget, but at least I would have money to make the clothes. Alternatively, I can think of it as an investment for myself, making clothes that I would wear in the future, and paying out of pocket. This would be easier in that I would always have a model (me), but I would probably put an even smaller budget on each outfit in that case, since I really don't want to be broke!
Sounds like your first day at Sew-Green went really well. It's normal to be rusty when it comes to working on a sewing machine, or anything else you have not done in a while. Its really cool that this place works on projects for people in need, that's motivation to keep trying and striving to improve your skills. It was a great point she made about having a theme, don't let it limit you, but a collection that compliments each other will keep you focused. As far as raising funds goes we can talk about some possible ways of obtaining money, or maybe even talking to fabric stores about the project and seeing if they have any programs to help with costs. Retail stores often give small discounts for these sorts of things. We could come up with some ways to raise money, maybe even something as simple as having friends and family save all their bottles and cans, those really add up. Let me think on that and we can brainstorm some ideas together, we don't want you going broke doing this. I look forward to meeting Monday. Keep up the good work :)
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