Repetition By Repetition

One of the things I found fascinating about Diane Ericson is that she's the daughter of an artist. Her son is a third generation artist. Being a second and third generation artist puts you miles ahead in the artistic journey. Lessons that many first generation artists need to learn are far more easily assimilated when you grow up in an art respecting environment. Lessons like exploring a question.

While I was painting her apartment, my daughter made the funniest comment. She works in the accounting office of an advertising firm. The other members of the accounting office find working with artists difficult. She explained to them that artists are always changing their mind and as soon as you accept that fact and learn to work with it, things will go a lot smoother. When they asked her how she was able to do that she said I grew up with an artist to which I felt compelled to point out that I'm not always changing my mind to which she replied yes you are about art things. True!

Amanda Lang is the Senior Business Correspondent for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. She recently wrote a book called The Power of Why. It's a book about innovation. In a recent interview, she noted that we've raised a generation of kids that know how to give the right answer, that they're good at school but they don't question. Questioning the status quo has never been an issue for me. I'm not the type to do something just because that's the way it's always been done which is good because it's the what if, how can I, and why questions that help us to move ahead and explain ...

... why I'm not at all upset to have spent over a month exploring the concept of a better fitting t-shirt only to end up using the same T & T pattern I started out with. In-between, a lot was learned and both the fit is much improved and the list of pattern adjustments is substantially reduced - down to shortening CF and CB length, a FBA when needed, and a 1" high hip adjustment. That's SO MUCH easier than before and that shorter list will affect every single pattern going forward and significantly improve both my prep time and my results. YES YES!

The two black t-shirts are finished. I wore one of them for several hours yesterday afternoon and other than widening the hem of the 3/4 sleeve, they're close to perfect. And even that is fixable. I can cut the sleeves off at elbow length. I'm so pleased with the results that most of today will be spent tracing clean copies in various configurations to replace the ones currently in the T & T envelopes.

I've never asked Carolyn how she organizes her T & T files and that would be interesting to know since she is IMHO the Queen of T & T. Right now, I use envelopes with one for each part including backs, backs on fold, pieced fronts, fronts on fold, sleeves, cardigans, sleeveless and so on. Basically any variation on the theme.

Having all the parts and pieces prepped and ready to go makes it easy to cut out garments quickly. For instance - to cut out the surprise appearance striped knit bought recently - if I use two copies of the back, two copies of the sleeve, and one full copy of the front and cut each piece single layer, it'll be faster and more accurate. Full copies are also good for arranging on prints while duplicate copies help to maximize the use of fabric allowing me to get more t-shirts out of less yardage. The benefits are worth a day of tracing.

One of my friends is an accomplished pianist. Next spring, she'll be playing a highly complicated piece for a concert performance and between now and then she'll practice that piece for at least an hour a day, every day, perfecting it repetition by repetition. When I told her about the t-shirt journey, I compared it to practicing her piece. There is no way to perfect our abilities except by sewing the same thing over and over. Repetition is also the sewists form of practice.There is no point resenting that. Instead, I'm going to celebrate the results and be totally thrilled with my new patterns and the fact that I can fearlessly wade into the stash and cut up the good stuff. And get more practice.

Talk soon - Myrna

Grateful - that blogger has a spam file so I can delete them all at once because since removing the verification there are a LOT of spam messages - 135 in six days.