Sewingplums

Manufacturing clothes is very different from what we hobby sewers do.

It’s not one of my goals to make clothes that look like RTW. Round here, RTW typically means black or grey, and badly made in cheap fabrics. Have you ever gone onto a department store fashion floor and seen a sea of black ? Definitely something I sew to get away from 😀

Some mail order is good, some not. One of my favourite designers has lowered quality to keep prices down. Happily that’s obvious from their catalogue. They don’t photograph quality and then send dross.

Here’s a series of recent posts from YouLookFab which make it clear how very different the whole RTW process is from what we do, as non-professionals making single garments.

Design

Making samples

Cut and make

Trim and dispatch

Interview with the designer – Karen Kane

And that’s for making RTW quality garments. The clothes in the big clothing store in this suburb must be made by robot to be possible at that price, which is a whole other world again. (Or by very poorly paid people living in appalling conditions.)

If we want to compare ourselves with professionals (and we don’t need to !), we are most like professional dressmakers who make individual garments for individually shaped people. Or perhaps people who make short runs of clothes for small boutiques.

P.S. 18 months later YouLookFab has another series, on a smaller clothing company. Here’s a fascinating piece on how the pattern maker fits into the process, and the skills involved.

(P.P.S. 2018.
Here’s a post by Brooks Ann Camper, who makes custom wedding dresses, and has never learned either pattern making or clothes construction by the conventional routes. She teaches making personalised clothes directly, rather than by adapting an average pattern.
Here’s her list of on-line classes – with rich materials and much personal help.)

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My very beautiful new iMac arrived yesterday. My big step for this week is to get it connected to the internet. Then I’ll be able to see everyone’s Flickr photos 😀

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Links available August 2011

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In this season of gift giving, a holiday question :
If you received an unlimited dream wardrobe of any clothes of your choice – bought, made for you, made by yourself – what would you choose ?

what styles ? crisp or soft ? fitted or swirling ? which designers if any ?
what textures ? gabardine, crepe, knit, tweed, leather, lace, silk denim, charmeuse. . . ?
what would be really important for you ?

For me – how about an infinite supply of alpaca fleece made to my own colour palette 😀

And a set of perfectly fitting slopers, made for me without any effort on my part by some magical genius. . .

And easy real reality access to a quality fabric shop with the same taste as me. . . (I’m allowed an infinite budget don’t forget, perhaps I’d better have a larger house too 😀 )

Sometimes I have so many ideas that I would like someone to make clothes for me. Though I really wouldn’t want to give up that surge of grinning glee when I get to the ‘Hey I made this’ stage of a project 😀

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Best Wishes for your Holiday, and for all your sewing plans for 2011.

And thanks for all your interest, which makes this rewarding to do.
Your gift to me : on Wednesday my blog received its 50,000 th visitor since it started – wow !! 😀

😀 😀 😀 Many many thanks for all your interest 😀 😀 😀

Lots of possible topics in preparation : super quick jacket patterns; Eileen Fisher skirts and pants; Eileen Fisher layering pieces; pant styles for body shapes; eventually hopefully something on combining collars; trendy pant styles – probably now deferred until the new season’s styles are picked out by the local fashion magazines; hopefully I’ll find that little book of wardrobing advice written in the nineteenth century (“How to dress like a lady on £15 a year ” – what a lovely book title). . .

Clothes are such a rich source of topics and fun 😀

Just don’t expect a regular schedule !!

Dragon Lady at Stitchers Guild posted a link to a fascinating article on who gets what, out of what we pay for designer clothes.

The example is ‘designer’ pants costing $550.

Out of that, the manufacturer gets $110 (20%) – which pays for materials and wages (skilled hand processing) plus overheads and profit.
The designer gets $110 (20%).

And you’re giving $330 (60% – yes the mark-up in fashion is this big) to the store to pay for all the garments they bought in but didn’t manage to sell on.

You are paying for the ambience and the choice, but that still seems rather a lot !

Putting it another way :

Materials for the designer pants cost $54 (10%).
So, if you sew your own clothes using quality materials and quality methods, what you make is worth 10 times what it cost you !

People who aren’t interested in sewing would say we should factor in the cost of our time. But for us that’s fun time. An added value, not a cost.

Or the other way round, we could even make this into a reason to buy a new machine. Hmm, $550 (RTW price) – $54 (cost of materials) = c$500 saved. Some quite good sewing machines and sergers available for that 😀

And there’s another added value, of getting something that fits. Even a high end store with an alterations service can’t get garments to fit my hips that are 2 sizes larger than my top – the seam allowances just aren’t wide enough.

The cost of a few wadders pales into insignificance. . .

So Hurrah for Home Sewing 😀

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Links available May 2010