Thursday, April 8, 2010

The moment of commitment

One of the most intense sensations when designing and sewing, I find in my own practice, is the moment when I must commit to cutting the fabric following the finalization of the pattern. When you are working from a pattern someone else has prepared, you also get this in a milder form - have you selected the right size and traced out all the lines correctly? But when you've worked for days coming up with a pattern that you think serves and must commit to turning the pattern into a garment, this moment is particularly intense. It is true that you can make a muslin shell rather than use the good fabric, but even for that, you are committing to several hours work that may be less than adequate if you need to rethink the design at that point. As long as you are working on paper, you are not "committed" to the design, but after switching to laying out, cutting and sewing, mistakes become more serious and what you do has direct consequences.

It is both a terrifying and an exhilerating experience, even for the most modest garment. I'm sure if you did this professionally, you would learn to manage this moment more routinely, but I'm not sure even then that the intensity of the moment of commitment will every quite disappear!

1 comment:

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