Textile Friday: Mastery Teaches You to Love

           “I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil – this is the gift of God.”
             ~ King Solomon, the wisest man who lived on the meaning of life, Ecclesiastes 3:12-13

             So, hopefully you enjoyed last week's textile friday post. It comes to you courtesy of a friend who said that it's important to let people see you struggle. Me, I hate that level of honesty. I'd like people to think I was just naturally brilliant instead of hard-headed and human. Well, we'll see if this helps you, my readers. Ultimately this blog is for you. Anyways, so if last week's post didn't scare you, why do through that level of hell? (BTW, if you have the time you can always spread out the learning curve over a decade or two with less pain. That's perfectly respectable. Money and time always help cushion the blows.) The answer is a simple one word:
              LOVE.
              There's something about doing something you love, that makes you wake up passionately ready to go in the morning that is just an unbeatable feeling. I think strongly that it's something everyone should do at least once. To do something I loved, every morning, every day....for almost three years now has been the greatest gift I think I've ever been given. I also feel that it has helped me fill up the cracks in my soul and years of insecurity. The wisest men of every generation from King Solomen forward to Henry Ford to the Beatles to Walt Disney have all advocated doing something you love. And eat well. Not like, but would be willing to spend the rest of your life paying someone to do for free. And it's not the same for everyone. It took me years of trial and error to find. But for me it's sewing. The physical aspect of sewing something on a machine and then seeing customers smile as they walk away or come back a year later with a story of how they wore what, then, with friends or family or loved ones that fills me up. I've never been good at telling people I love them or taken much stock in words as they're easy to manufacturer and mean little. Making them something that physically touches them every day, that seems incredibly real to me.
              For you, it may be something else. Woodworking. Or blacksmithing. Or crunching account numbers. I hope that whatever gets you up the morning to work you find. Even if you take a while to get there. Have a great week people. And for everyone local look forward to seeing you Sparkcon tomorrow. Next week, I'll be revealing our new fall collection: Beloved.

Textile Friday: The Tipping Point To Becoming A Master

                    " Is it better to be a jack of all trades, or to pursue mastery?" ~Jeff Goins

 
           What is mastery? This week, I thought I would share a wonderful writer I've been reading recently Jeff Goins. He's got a great blog that has really solidified a lot of things I've been turning over in my mind this year on what it means to be master in the crafts.
           In the trades, no one hands you a diploma when you become a master. It's not a title or a test you can take. It's a title earned over time by word of mouth by your peers. It's not a sort of imperfect perfection or an inability to be wrong. Experts are wrong ALL the time. Especially in fashion which is a marriage of art and commerce. You don't understand what a designer wants. What a customer wants. What the limits of a particular design or material are. You miss the season. Or fall in love with a concept that no one else gets. You practice every day. Being a master will not make you skinny, hot, popular, or well-loved.
            In textiles, they say that it takes 10 years to get established and 20 to 25 years to become a master is typical. It's a long game business where being over 50 is considered an asset, not a liability for a designer/manufacturer. Gaining mastery in this business is also something that involves A LOT of failure. I'm not talking about once or twice or even a hundred times. It's said that to master a particular motion or stroke takes 10,000 times of doing it. That's a lot of sewing and a lot of not right. It's one of the things that got me into production sewing, the average production sewer will do a particular process 600 to 1600 times a DAY, that means every few weeks you can master a particular element that I've seen local boutique sewers struggle with or develop workarounds instead of the actual skill necessary to pull off the ideal result. Being a home sewer most of my life and getting into this business late as an adult, making a few bags or shirts a week, I figured I'd never get there unless I got serious. This wasn't my first thought, or my first year's thought, but it's a thought that I wish I had realized a lot sooner. Perhaps it was more when I realized there was no way to avoid this level of commitment to pain.
            Because failing sucks. Your fingers bleed. Rip. You get scars from iron burns. And callouses in weird places. Your back hurts. And your right leg and knee cramp from the unfamiliar twists and turns of operating a knee-lift and foot petal at the same time. Your arms and shoulders distort themselves in thin ropes of fire. The first three months of working an assembly line in Charlotte were the type of hell I would never wish on anyone. The first three weeks, I didn't know if I would survive to the next day. I mean throw up in a trash can, get off and plow your way into a couch bone tired exhausted asleep. Food forgotten. I was homeless that summer, living out of my car and crashing at the studio in this odd state of confusion my family has left me in most of my life having burnt through my savings the past 6 months on a failed store front on 7th Street and helping my folks not lose their home that had all the right earmarks of success, but none of the actual measures of it.
           My mother's parting gift before she jetted off to "write her book" was the fact that she had me as a last ditch attempt to save her marriage. I'd always known she didn't want kids early on, that I wasn't her favorite. Hell, sometimes she hated me, but hearing you were created as a last minute bandaid for a failing relationship and coming to grips with the fact that 29, love and acceptance are something that are ever going to come from a flighty artist writer mother was both devastating and also stripped away any breaks on balance.
             I still have the dog from that summer, but not much else. I gave or sold away almost everything I owned. Burned through relationships and resources like candy. Unable to walk away from sewing. I have never in all my life met anything that rivaled the feeling of peace I get working with my hands creating tangible goods. It's like finding a zen moment suddenly in the middle of a noisy street. And I needed it desperately. Sometimes, you find what you need at the end of your rope. Sewing was that for me at that point.
             I've always been told I have good hands. I've been hunted by surgeons for medical procedures. Had a boss tell me that if he had my hands he could rule the world. The sad part, is most of the time, the praise didn't last beyond the moment. It never brought the peace that sewing and designing textiles has. Sometimes, I still can't believe people will actually pay me for what I make, that what I make changes the world. Some days I hate the machine and my crippled hands for not creating my vision fast enough or clean enough to truly serve those around me.
              There's moments that mark us, that we can't unsee or unlive. In many ways, finding my version of the family tailor trade has been incredibly healing. It has also included a lot of suffering. Most of it, my own doing. My name Dara means dwelling place of wisdom and compassion. Compassion is one of those nasty little words that means "with suffering." Yes, that's right....wisdom with suffering. Living with it. You give up a lot to master a trade. To learn a skill. And it's something that I think everyone struggles to decide if they truly want to do or not. There's plenty of things I wish I was better at or had more time for, but you only have so much time in the day and so many things you can do.
              But, if you want to be a master, then it's a deal you make. There's this point about a year or two in where you see people decide to throw in the towel or double-down and I've decided it's the early tipping point between success and failure. People may throw away that mastery or decide to pursue other things, but there's a moment you decide to go all in that really seems to make the difference between success and failure. Well, this post was a bit rambling...just my thoughts on masters in the trades. I wish you success in your travels too. And a warm thanks to Nash for putting up with all my single-minded determination and absentmindedness. Love you. Happy Friday everyone!

Textile Friday: Uncrippling Ourselves in Modern Times

      The oldest tailor joke is probably about a guy going into a store to buy a suit. There's probably a thousand versions of this, but the one I've found that is closest to my grandfather's version goes like this:

     "This guy walks into the Ye Olde APL Tailor Shoppe. And wanting to buy a suit, the tailor pulls one of the rack, and has him try it on.
    The guy says to the tailor that the jacket doesn't fit right, one arm is much longer than the other.
    'No problem", says the tailor, 'Just hunch up your shoulder on that side, and it'll look fine.'
    'The lapels are uneven.' says the guy.
    'Oh, that. Well, push it over with your chin.'
    The guy also notices that the pants aren't the same length.
    'Hitch up your hip on the longer side, and it'll be fine. Now, my! Doesn't that look great!'
    The guy gimps out of the tailor shop wearing his new suit, and passes two old ladies walking the other way. After he passes, the one says to the other: 'Oh, that poor old man. Did you see how crippled up he was?'
     'Yes, but doesn't his suit fit him well?'"   ~Robert Bernecky in Quote Quad

      In general, it's agreed that our modern clothing and footwear weighs 20-40% more and provides 20-40% less mobility than our grandparent's clothing in the 1950s. And that's the expensive "quality" stuff. BBC did a great example article on this a few years ago you can see here. We've gained a lot through modern production methods, namely cheap affordable clothing. In volume, my wardrobe rivals a countess or lord of the 1850s. But, does it really free me to look my best? In our quest for disposable beauty, 86% of the population no longer has clothing that actually fits them. Myself included.
       Knowing a problem exists is not the same as fixing it. I've watched ill-fitting clothing slowly creep into the wares I sold at Belk's department stores for almost a decade. It's what made me decide to get into manufacturing. And they are symptomatic of a trend you see in any major department store: Dillards, Macys, etc. Everyone is guilty. The masters and experts of my parent's and grandparent's generation say it's been happening since the late 1970s and early 1980s which is almost 30 years. I should add here that JC Penny is considered the only noted exception by some judges, I leave the truth of that to people who actually have spent more than 20 years in the business.
        After 3 years of moving over to the manufacturing side of house, I have come to agree that newer designers, cutters, and sewers tend to allow a lot more "slop" in the system than older ones. The bull's eye gets much much smaller for acceptable pass/fail standards the more experienced the craftsman (or woman). I've got my own cheat sheet I've built to understand what a designer's actual ability is when they are talking to me, but I won't bore you with the numbers. Mostly, it's a technical way of saying sloppy. In short, it is as if moving up a level of trade skill involves recognizing and embracing these tighter demands.Some people never recognize these levels, but doing so helps you grow.
       Which brings me to computers. Computers are a huge crutch for beginning designers, manufacturers, and tradespeople. But to quote one of my favorite patternmakers, "Computers don't make your designs better, they just help you get there faster."  But no computer, no matter how shiny, is real substitute for ability and I think we as a nation are learning that the hard way after the technology boom of the 1990s. And manual (analog) ability often takes a lot of hard work to get to. Thankfully, there's a lot of great masters in my area willing to share their thoughts and ability so begins the hard task of moving up the ladder from journeyman to master. I'm reading a lot, doing a lot, and you dear customer get to benefit from better products all around. Hopefully, we can all answer this question together as American manufacturing comes home and we rediscover what being skilled labor means. I look forward to the future with you and hopefully we'll all have suits worth wearing that don't make us look like cripples. And set us free.