Sewing is so easy, it hurts.

If you think sewing is easy, you’re  in for a big surprise. The class I took used industrial machines. They weren’t ordinary home sewing machines, but those used by the industry as its name suggests. The professor asked that we form a group so that we could help each other out and so I joined a team that I thought had great potential. And they were! Unfortunately, they didn’t show up after the first class meeting.

It might have been due to their schedule or due to the arduous task of learning how to use an industrial machine. An industrial sewing machine which is referred to as a lockstitch is very heavy and has oil underneath it to keep it in what I guess to be in good working condition. It’s stationary, can’t be moved and if you press too hard with your foot, it will act more like a drilling machine rather than a sewing machine.

I thought I would never get used to it and still have to watch how gently I press the footer before it starts acting up. There were times when I was cursing at it, because either the bobbin wasn’t functioning properly or the threading was done incorrectly or the bobbin was without the thread suited for the garment being sewn. It was just a daunting task. It was also hard to get help.

Most students who took the class expressed interest in making their own garments for cosplay. I wanted to go into the fashion industry as I have been a fan of Jean Louis’ fashion design for Judy Holliday in movies like Born Yesterday and The Solid Gold Cadillac, one movie involving political corruption and another shady business dealings in Wall Street respectively. It was the way Jean Louis made Judy Holliday fit into her dress as my research revealed that made me understand the importance of design.

  My goal was to see how sewing was actually done. As I later found out it wasn’t so easy. My group dropped the class, but I found something more interesting about fashion students in general. Like my classmates in Finance at SJSU, they were very helpful and giving of their time and energy especially when I was confused with the pattern for the shorts- “like how do you put this together?!?” I’m laughing now, but it wasn’t so funny back then. You see, I’ve never sewed a damn thing in my life. I can’t cook, I can’t bake, I just wanted to do something different from what I was doing which was comic books.

Then the fire in Paradise, California came and the air was filled with smoke. Our class took place every Friday from 9am until 3 pm. For 2 consecutive weeks the class was cancelled. I think the second week missed was for a holiday and we needed those 2 weeks to complete the camp shirt our professor said we would complete by the end of the semester.

The reason I sauntered on was that the camp shirt was precisely what I needed to take my design from comic books to fashion. It was like destiny, how was it possible that this was the final project. I just thought we would learn the basics but we went on to do shorts, a skirt with an invisible zipper (grumble! grumble! grumble!), and, lastly, the camp shirt. We also learned an array of sewing styles pertaining to seams coupled by seemingly uncooperative sewing machines. Luckily, everyone was on the same boat and I lucked out! Unlike all my cohorts in art schools, everyone was willing to help each other out.

The camp shirt we would complete by the end of the semester with our own fabric.

The camp shirt had many parts to it and I didn’t how I was going to pull this one off without the professor around or the assistant instructor. The skirt nearly made me quit the class because of the invisible zipper. So I made an effort to come in during the days when the school was open which was any day between Monday through Thursday. I went all days.

The fabric I was going to make the camp shirt with had a Star Wars themed print on it, and an experienced student designer Britney thought it was awesome. She went on to show me how to do the collars and get me started on it. In the process I learned she was into cosplay and showed me some of her work online, which is largely a collection of Disney inspired princesses. She helped me figure out the cutting of the pattern and had it not been for her the  Millennium Falcon would have been backwards. I’m more of an Episode 1 kind of Star Wars fan- Queen Amidala with the kabuki inspired garb and make up- I really didn’t pay attention to the starships from the 1977 movie.

The way a garment is made will make you crazy. It didn’t help that the professor was using white fabric, so I didn’t know if the fabric was face up or face down. It was essentially like finance with all the ratios one has to deal with. You actually have to think, in order to figure out how to sew a garment, because it is so confusing. A lot of people except for the more experienced ones did not complete the project.

I was also driven, because I wanted to prove to the professor and the rest of the class that I could do it! And I did! I felt so proud when I went into the class with my camp shirt. I was smug and proud and a bit of a show off. There was one little glitch to the project, which was the sleeve. Since, this was my first class in sewing, I didn’t know anything about ease.

The professor was surprised and so were the rest of the class. And I was hooked! This was not what I expected at all! It was like when I graduated in Finance and met SJSU professors who were saying I should be a writer, or I really know what I’m doing.
As a result, I’m on my way to almost completing all the necessary knowledge to make patterns, and my own fashion line! If interested in the pdf of the fashion catalog, email me at realintegritycomics@gmail.com

I also started my own fashion design group on Facebook for those serious in their entrepreneurial journey in the fashion industry. Here's the link!:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/fashion4passion/edit/

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