I created my dream job, but it feels like a secret
No matter how long you’ve known me, unless you’re a current client, you probably don’t know what I’m doing in any given moment as my work. It’s not because I’m hiding anything. In fact, it’s usually because I’ve been the Man Behind the Curtain like in the Wizard of Oz (my favorite movie as a child).
I even taught a workshop at a sewing professionals convention about how to work in the industry without showing your face. I don’t know why I felt like it was so important to be a “secret weapon” when my clients obviously like working with me?
The actual tasks are pretty clear, but it feels hard to explain and sounds really complicated because I can do (and love to do) a great many different things. I want to be clear that although I think about all of the projects and services I am offering or developing at the same time, I’m regrettably only a single person at a time. I’m not doing all of these things at once.
If I were to list them in order order of complexity, or on a timeline, or even organized by client it would feel like a resume or something. But unlike a resume, it wouldn’t simply be a list of things I completed. Completing a project and moving on - that wouldn’t be true for me. I don’t discontinue the services I provide - I simply learn and grow and make friends and continue to care about whatever the work was. It becomes a part of me; available for the next opportunity.
Even though I don’t call myself an artist, the way I approach my work sure feels like that. Open to possibility, and focused on the best possible outcome, I either create exquisite and meaningful work myself or help create the plans and instructions for someone else to do so.
I didn’t go to fashion school. I wanted to, but there wasn’t an obvious place for me. I’m not a “designer” in the artistic sense. I didn’t know there were technical paths I could have pursued, but at the same time, most schools don’t teach what I’ve learned about fitting bodies while focused on the people inside those bodies. I didn’t see anybody who looked like me. Even now, it’s hard to find a school that exposes students to a wide range of shapes, ages, and abilities to design around in their curriculum. The optimism and compassion it takes to design for humanity with a heart toward earthly stewardship and honoring the craft of generations past is probably best learned through experience anyway. If you want to hear more about that journey and how I stumbled into my current career, you can listen to this podcast where I was interviewed about it.
I call myself a patternmaker. And I am. I can literally look at something and make it repeatable. I can see something in 3D and have a vision of how it flattens two dimensions so it can be re-created in 3 dimensions again. I was thankfully born with a natural affinity for spatial awareness, but it’s more than luck. Technical experience acquired over a lifetime of creating a physical plan for what is in my head - or before my eyes - or described from someone else’s imagination- is the other part of that equation. It’s a way to make dreams come true. It’s a kind of magic, for sure, even though zooming in to focus on minute fractions of an inch can feel more like a left- than right-brained activity while I’m in the middle of it. I invested a very large amount of money in software that took me two years to really learn to use because I thought it might do the work for me. It doesn’t. I’m grateful for that investment and learning experience, because along the way I honed my craft to be worthy of the investment in what I now know was a tool. It’s not a magic wand. *I’m the magic wand.*
I call myself a pattern grader. And I am. I have read every book I could get my hands on about grading (in many languages, from a wide variety of decades), practiced their methods, adapted and combined them where that made sense, and made mistakes so my clients don’t have to. I make it possible for a broad range of sewing humans to create their own garments. In their size. Making custom clothes for other people since high school has shown me what’s needed to accommodate the individual dimensional requirements humans have. No two of us are alike, even if we share the same bust-waist-hip measurements. Grading has become a superpower I can wield that gives as many sewing people as I can accommodate a good start on patterns that can be sewn and fitted to their unique shapes. Helping indie pattern designers and brands expand their size ranges and fits to accommodate more people is a dream come true. Helping people who are underserved for whatever reason (cough, cough fatphobia, white supremacy, toxic capitalism) is my favorite thing to do. I’ll never stop learning about how to make life better for people through their clothing.
I call myself a teacher, and I am. Whether or not I know it at the time. We are ideally all learning from one another if we’re open to it. We can even learn from ourselves if we’re willing to be quiet enough to listen to the dreams and struggles of our own inner children. I’m my own best student. Not just a sewing teacher, but a life teacher, an enthusiastic supporter of growth, a Sewing Fairy Godmother. I cant help but share what I learn, so expect some classes soon. Keep an eye on my gatherings page or sign up for my email list up there on top to be notified when they launch.
Little Karen learned to sew at 5 years old. It would be decades before I would realize I could make my favorite activity a major part of my work. I have had so many careers. (That is a story for another time - maybe even a book?) Many of them were enjoyable and all were educational but I always came back to making things. Suffice it to say for now that I was always the least cool and most technical one in a community of artists, or the least cool and most creative one in a world of engineers or finance analysts. I have never fit in. So I stopped trying. I just make things, I make friends, and I make dreams come true.
