[Photo borrowed stolen from Marcy Tilton’s fabric store.
I wrote recently questioning the definition of design. This morning I reviewed my blog posts since early February of this year (the date I traveled to Santa Barbara and got kick-started by my friends/teachers/mentors Diane Ericson and Marcy Tilton and inspired by all my stylish sisters of the cloth on the West Coast). I have made a staggering 27 garments since returning from Design Outside the Lines. Twenty-seven!
(Oh, and that’s in addition to a bunch of knitting, two sewn bags, and helping DGD make her first T-shirt.)
Honestly, that seems a bit obscene.
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I discovered and began following Sarah Gunn’s Goodbye Valentino blog last fall and admired her Ready-to-Wear (RTW) Fast, but never thought I could do something like that. After attending Design Outside the Lines in February, I was pumped and decided to begin my own RTW Fast.
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Now let’s be very, very clear: I am not a shopper. I haven’t been inside a mall since about two months ago when my family doctor told me I had to ditch the underwires and buy new bras. đ I would never, ever, under any circumstances short of the house burning down and all my clothes going up in smoke (knock wood) have bought that many clothes in THREE years, much less eight months!
So how did this happen? The Internet. I’ve been sewing for 50 years. When I was a teenager, I would go to the Singer store or to Belk-Lindsey in Colonial Plaza to buy my fabric. There were lots of decent fabrics in those daysâwools, cottons, things one wasn’t ashamed to put on one’s body. (Do I sound like an Old Fart or what?!) Then came Cloth World and things started going downhill. I had my boys and sewed exclusively with Stretch & Sew, making all their cute little t-shirts and coordinating shorts. I made their father’s suits and outfits for myself.
The boys outgrew my sewing, their dad and I divorced, and I moved to Washington. I was working full-time and pursuing my Bachelor’s degree, and sewing time wasn’t readily available.
Ten years later I had finished my B.S. and J.D. and finally had the luxury of discretionary time. I learned to quilt and G Street Fabrics became my home away from home. Choosing quilting fabrics was relatively easy. But choosing a garment pattern and fabrics? Not so easy. I would pore over the Vogue pattern catalog for 20 minutes (aghast at the cost of a single pattern) and choose something I wanted to make. Then I’d wander the aisles for an hour. An hour! There were new-fangled fibers I’d never heard of, alongside my beloved and familiar natural fibers. I was in total sensory overload.
I’d try to choose fabrics and buttons to go along with the garment pattern I’d chosen. After an hour that I’d never see again, I’d put the pattern back in the drawer and walk out of the store, frustrated and sad that I was too [some perjorative adjective] to be able to choose a simple pattern and fabrics. I would make, maybe, one garment a year.
Fast forward to online fabric stores coupled with easy and flattering patterns for knit tops. Now I’m having the time of my life. I’m enjoying the sewing. I’m learning what I like and what I don’t like. I’m learning about my body. I’m learning new sewing techniques. I’m developing the confidence to ignore or override pattern instructions. I’m able to decide that something will only be worn under a jacket to the grocery store. I’m able to determine something is awful in its current incarnation and will be cut apart for a reincarnation. I’m amazed when I look inside my own head.
How is an online store different—for me—from a bricks-and-mortar fabric store? Let me tell you how I shop. I was a Nordstrom pianist for nine years in the Washington, DC, region. (Remember when Nordstrom had pianos and live pianists in every store? Wasn’t that heavenly? I always said I made “beautiful music to shop by.”) I would sit on the piano bench for five hours, amusing myself and all the shoppers in the store. I was always watching the sales associates as they whizzed by me, gathering garments for their customers to try on. On each ten-minute break at the top of the hour, I would stroll through my favorite departments, noting items I thought would be good on me. Then when I needed an outfit for an event or to supplement my wardrobe, I would go in to Nordy’s on my day off, try on several of the garments I had noted, and—within half an hour—be in and out of the store with what I needed. I don’t dawdle. I don’t try on things to try them on. I don’t waste my time.
How is that analogous to an online fabric store? Most every day, I pick up my iPad and spend five or so minutes at MarcyTilton.com or GorgeousFabrics.com or EmmaOneSock.com or VogueFabricsStore.com or MoodFabrics.com or [okay, that’s enough to give you an idea of what I mean]. If there’s something I really love and want to remember, I might pin it to a Pinterest board. Then when one of these stores notifies me via email newsletter or on their Facebook page feed that they’re having a sale, and there’s a new Vogue or Butterick pattern I want to make or I’ve decided I need just-one-more-knit-top for my upcoming trip to Europe, I’ll jump to that fabric (or a similar one if it’s already sold out) and buy it.
I no longer feel overwhelmed, as the clock isn’t ticking while I walk around the store. My finger is clicking around the stores for days, and I don’t feel pressured to buy anything on any one visit. And those twenty-seven garments? There are more than a handful that—sewn and tried-on—I love.love.love! This, which I’ll finish today; this; this; this; and the top I turn to whenever I need to smile, THIS! Oh, and my Marcy Tilton pants – Love ’em!
So what does this have to do with Thinking About Design? Some would say that design (in fashion) is imagining and creating the pattern for the garment or the outfit. I’m proposing that designing also includes taking that pattern and partnering it with fabric and notions to create the finished garment.
And, for me, online fabric stores make that so much easier. Even if I can’t pet the fabrics before purchasing them.
I want to tell you how I have personally defined “RTW Fast.” In the months since I began my fast, I have purchased two pair of pants, two sweaters, and two pair of shoes (and a few replacement bras, on doctor’s orders). The pants were replacements for existing Eileen Fisher stretch crepe pants that I wore frequently and had worn out or had snagged beyond repair. I couldn’t make replacements—to my knowledge, the fabric is just not available, nor is the pattern. I totally love those pants and don’t want to live without them. While they’re still available, I’m going to buy them. That’s my rebellious nature popping out. A new black sweater was to replace a thirteen-year-old black sweater that was embarrassingly old and worn. The other sweater was something I just couldn’t make and needed for the cold of northern Europe in mid-November. The shoes—I can’t make shoes. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
