Vogue - 8397 - As stupid as it may sound, I often think while reading and not necessarily about the text on the page particularly if what I'm reading is my version of a sitcom - the romance - which requires little thought, happy ending guaranteed. Yesterday, I thought about the similarities between a blank canvas and basic recipes.
Vogue 8499 - One of the things I loved about seeing Marcy's work was the different variations on a theme. Like Carolyn, she's a master of the T & T and knows how to take a pattern and interpret it in endless ways finishing up with a garment that you would never have associated with that particular pattern. It's inspiring. So are her fabric choices. As I said before, many of the patterns that I had previously viewed as boxy and stiff were - in reality - drapey and flowing. Her interpretations, her fabric choices, her embellishments - they all encouraged me to be more adventurous in my choices, to experiment more.
Vogue 8430 - There's a huge portion of the sewing population who want to cut on the lines, stitch, and have the garment fit them exactly with no work and no imagination required. Unless you happen to have the body for which the pattern was drafted, it's not going to happen. Instead, to get the level of fit we each individually want, we each need to individually tweak.
Vogue 8783 - In one lecture, Marcy referred to the pattern as the basic recipe. Think about bread. There's white, whole wheat, sourdough, rye and numerous other flours each of which alters the density, taste, and finished results of the loaf baked from a basic bread recipe - just like the fabric factor. Everything we do to our garment including the fabrics, tactile and visual textures, seams, seam finishes, closures, and embellishments is our variation of the basic recipe. Think cookies. Take out the nuts. Add chocolate chips. Ice as desired. So many choices.
Vogue 8454 - We get basic recipes with baking yet fail to make the switch-over to garment construction relying far too heavily on the pattern designer and the pattern drafter to narrow the issues. I do it too even though I saw the same thing when teaching my students how to move away from quilt patterns and into designing independent textile art. Because I'd already had that experience, I knew what I was missing and the workshop was that click that connected for me. Even so, it takes a while to start thinking outside the box without instructions - to see the garment as a blank canvas and realize you can paint it in any style you choose. I know it's worth the work. I've been there done this before and after seeing what Marcy is creating, I'm encouraged to work harder.
Vogue 8813 - Quite a while ago, I watched a video with Peggy (Sager I believe) of Silhouette Patterns. In it she said that all her t-shirt designs begin with the one basic pattern and that her original intent had been to sell that pattern so that sewists could make their own variations except it didn't work. The sewists perferred to have Peggy create the interpretations and buy the individual patterns. That's certainly reminiscent of my quilting into textile art days and shows how we can embrace the challenge and the possibilities by evolving the pattern until it fits our figure the way we want it to fit and by using that evolved pattern as the T & T blank canvas of future designs.
Vogue 8671 - In the same video, Peggy kept saying this or that t-shirt she was showing was a copy of X or Y designer. Copying a particular technique like a collar or cuff or closure interests me. Copying an exact look does not. I love the challenge of design so my interest is in designing my own variations. It's been that way for a long time. That's how I ended up in textile art over quilt patterns and it's why I paint abstract instead of realism and it's why in one of my drawing classes I asked the instructor how do we work out of our head instead of drawing from a still life or a photograph? She looked at me like I was crazy!
I have one appointment this morning and then several hours home alone to work in the studio. The purse I'm finishing is taking forever but now that I've reconnected with the general idea, re-thought through some of the solutions necessary, and have unsewn yesterday's mistakes, I'm ready to take it forward to finished. Hopefully today or tomorrow at the latest but definitely before Monday. Next week, I should be starting on M & D inspired fashions.
Talk soon - Myrna
Grateful - that I live in a time where workshops and self-expression are possible.
P.S. - go to Vogue Patterns and search by Marcy Tilton and you'll see that a whole bunch of her patterns are on clearance for $1.99. Each contains teaching tips. They're a great learning experience.
Great tip on the sale on Marcy's patterns! I already have most of them, but this is a great opportunity to pick up a few that I've missed. They are a lot of fun to sew and lend themselves to many interpretations.
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