week 2: hands on experience

This week was a short week- no work on Monday for Memorial Day.  But I learned a lot this week!  On Tuesday I was with Ark and Adrienne and I learned a little about how to fix the fit of pants.  Jillian, our fit model, came in to fit some pants- some that I wouldn't particularly like to ever have, but that's my opinion.  A few pairs had too much room in the bum area, so ark showed me how to fix that.  Generally, he cuts the seam at center back and spreads it a bit.  While spreading the seam he straightens the angle at which the seam is sewn together, which makes the bagginess go away.

Another set of pants had a very specific problem.  They were studded cargo pants but the material used for the pants is very thin; therefore, there is not a lot of fabric for the studs to grab onto.  This means the back of the studs are very sharp against the skin...so we had to figure out how to cover the backs in order to avoid any consumer lawsuits.

The nice thing about going to fittings is that I am slowly beginning to be able to recognize what problems look like rather than looking at a garment and thinking, "Oh, that looks nice!"  I am also learning little by little how one would go about fixing certain fit issues.

Wednesday I worked with Becky and I actually got to sew something.  This past week was 'Proto Week,' which means all the garments for the Spring 2013 line are shown to Michael for review.  This is the first time he sees things in 3D garment form rather than just sketches.  The design team decided they wanted scarves for spring, but this was a last minute decision.  So I got to make scarves this week.  They sent us down pieces of large, swatched fabric and wanted us to hem them into square scarves.  One piece of the fabric they sent was cut diagonally so I had to piece it together with another section in order to complete the pattern.  It was a good project because I had something to do for a few hours where I didn't have to ask questions every ten minutes.  Plus Michael will be looking at something I had a direct hand in making, which is a pretty cool idea!

Overall, a successful week!  And for some reason my camera is having issues, so the pictures are still coming...