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June 21, 2019
Most of you are home sewists who read this little weekly publication. But some of you are also businesswomen in the business of designing and executing garments for clients. In either case, your most valuable resource in time.
In life, we have to be very guarded and careful with this resource, because we all only have a certain amount of it. The one thing that money can do that is really useful is give us a little more freedom of time, but even that is limited. It's really not the money that is limited, it's the time, and it's the money that can purchase a little more time, but not unlimited.
As home sewists, that time may seem unlimited and in some cases this can be a blessing, particularly if you are retired and looking for something constructive and productive to fill our time. But finally the time comes when we want to accomplish tasks and need to be judicious about our time expenditures, especially since it isn't replaceable.
That's what time-management is about. Corporations and big companies are the champions at not only determining what areas can benefit from time management, but also how to start it and get it up and running at a very efficient rate. And there's no reason why we can't learn from them.
Here are some screen savers (they are huge, so if you right click and download them - that's fine by me, and they should fill your computer screen if you want to add them to your screensaver file). These are some excellent guidelines (well, really they are rules, because they are so good that they really hit home.
They really do steal time from you, and in this age where we are all encouraged and inspired and pushed into being more than we can be and doing more than we can do and knowing more than we can know - there's finally a limit.
There is this thing called down time, and it's vital to remember it.
The Drive Thief
So here you are, you've got all these wonderful projects that you want to do - and this great fabric, but suddenly you start looking at all this, and your drive is gone - you've been inundated with all the good stuff around.
Or for example you need to get a garment done that you've been promising yourself for a long time, but somehow you're not able to get to it cause every time you walk into your studio, you're so tired or have 15 other things on your mind.
This is the drive thief because this thief takes all your drive your motivation because so much is already on your plate. This thief says that not only can you do everything, but that you have to do everything, and that if you can't you're a failure. Well, as we know, nothing like that is the truth. And the question you need to ask yourself, is: Is there anything I can let go of? Like do I need to do all this for other people?....do
I need to make sure all the work is done before I can do anything for me?....and leave no time to do the things I want to do. Of course not. This is about setting priorities.
The Excellence Thief
OK - this is a good one, especially for we sewists: so you're doing a fitting on yourself, and you've picked the most glaring problem, and fixed it, but suddenly another one (that was there before, that you didn't see because you had this glaring #1 problem), and you fix that, then you fix the #3 most glaring, then the #4, then the #5, and suddenly you're on the #21st most glaring problem......LET IT GO!!! Your garment does not have to be excellent - it
doesn't have to be perfect, as a matter of fact, expecting perfection from yourself 100% of the time is not only impossible, but a set-up for failure. Is this what you really want - you're looking for something to help you set up for failure? It's sometimes a question we need to ask ourselves.
We humans are not perfect. Even the right and left sides of our face are not perfect. How in the world can we possibly expect a non-perfect being make something perfect? We can't, and therefore we should not expect perfection. When you hit about the #4 or #5 glaring fitting problem, it's time to let it go. Most often no one else will know, and if you're comparing it to RTW, then truly no one else will know because RTW is made so awfully poor, that your
garment will look perfect next to that!
The Information Thief
This is one of my favorites....so I'm searching for information on Karl Lagerfeld, then I see that he was friends with YSL, and wondered how they met, and found out that YSL had is first job working for Christian Dior, and then wondering if how many of those YSL fashions are in the show at the V & A, and wondering if that show is going to travel, and wondering who put the show together, and then get an email from Business of Fashion talking about Premium Mediocre and think that I
should write a blog about that, and go to my site and find out that I have 388 spam comments and have to delete them....now, and then I'm having trouble deleting them and look up the problem online to see if I can solve it........
Whew! I'm worn out just going through all that - and believe me that rabbit hole happens more often than not. How much of this information did I really need to know - and how much of my time did/do I waste doing this sort of thing.
STOP! This is an intervention - you do not need all this info and furthermore your time could be more efficiently spent doing other things like going back to Karl and finding out what you need and going on down the road to the goal you need to meet TODAY!!!!
The Activity Thief
So I'm working on a really neat creative project, and it's coming along really well, but I look at the way the collar band went into the neckline, and I'm thinking taking that out and putting it in better would be far more better looking, and after I do that, then I notice that the curves from the collar center front point to the shirt on the collar band aren't curved exactly correctly and even just a smidgen different on each side, so that has to be taken out and repaired,
then I realize that the button hole is going to fit in a very weird place on the collar band, so I need to find the correct button that will make this look good, but realize that the button drawer hasn't been organized well, so I need to take out all the buttons and reorganize the whole drawer........
......and down the rabbit hole I go!
Yeah, this is probably my #2 on the hit parade. So the fact is that at some point (probably 2 steps down the rabbit hole) you need to stop and say - let it go - the minute idiosyncrasies are so minor that they do not deserve our time. There might be a time later but not now.
It's important to set priorities in our calendar for who gets our time more than anything else. The best way I know to prioritize this is to set up a rule that every minute costs 50¢, so that means do I want to spend 2 hours (aka $60) of my time watching a stupid movie, that I know is stupid and that doesn't mean anything to me? Do I want to spend 4 hours (aka $120) working through some detail on a side seam that could easily be done in 5 mintues (aka
$2.50)? Do I want to spend 2 hours (aka $120) preparing dinner and having the family in the kitchen while I'm working on dinner to discuss the days events then sit down together and eat our meal all together? This really begins to put things in perspective and suddenly the priorities begin to fall into line very quickly.
That's sort of an in-your-face method, but a more common method used in business today is in the SewingArtistry Resource Library. I really enjoyed putting this together, and from my personal story, this has really helped me. One summer, I had 13 debutante dresses to do. I was thrilled, but then I walked into my studio and thought, "What in the h*ll have I done? Where in the world am I going to find the time to do all this work?" And then about 3
weeks into the summer (almost 30% of the time gone), I didn't have 30% of the dresses done, and was in a panic. I knew I had been working really hard and that I had done a lot of work and wasn't goofing off, but at the same time I wasn't making any progress. That's when I knew I needed to have a chart on the progress of each dress. I needed to break down the assembly method of each dress into parts and chart them out on my chart. I spent a whole weekend
doing this and was a little concerned at the time that I was spending some valuable working time doing this stupid chart. But at the end of the weekend, what I discovered what that I had 30% of the work done - and that each dress was making progress and that I was going to get this all done. I would have never known this had I not worked out this time management chart for myself. And of course the good news is that I got all 13 dresses done and each girl was not only happy with
her dress, but I was thrilled with the end result - as much about the time management chart as I was about getting the dresses all done.
The Time Management Chart is also called Commando Sewing. The last phrase is even better because let's think about this for a minute; how do commandos go about doing their jobs? First they do research and study what they have to do, the task at hand; then they set out a plan of how they are going to accomplish their goals; then they practice so that they
know what to expect when they are on their mission; then they go in and accomplish their mission and don't get sidetracked; and return home with the mission done! That's exactly what time management is all about - being very efficient with your time.
A little light housekeeping - Things on the SewingArtistry Resource Library are beginning to shape up pretty well. There are several new lessons to download - one is the Sleeve Package. This includes about all you need to know about sleeves including how to alter those dang things to hang and fit correctly, how to put them forward, backward, when you need to do that and what are the signs that you need to do this or
that.
Here are the resources for the Sleeve Package that you can get separately:
Basic Sleeve Insertion
Sleeve Head Placement
What's So Great About The FBA
Drafting Your Own Sleeve Block
Sleeve Variations
Sleeve Details (including the pattern)
Armscye Alterations
But in the Entire Package you not only get all of the above, but these as well:
Fitting Stance
Integrating the Shoulder Armscye and Bust Area
To see all of these click here.
I loved doing this cause a well hung sleeve can be a joy to behold and a pain in the neck to figure out, and this package is to help you. But if you don't want the whole package, you can download only the parts you want.
Then there's the famous Patchwork Shirt based on a TV shirt, as I'm sure you all know that follow me, from one of my favorite TV shows. This shirt is inspired by that TV shirt, and I want to encourage you all to do the same thing. The shirt is a lot of fun and it encourages and promotes your total creativity. Most of all after you finish the shirt, you will not have any
shirt like it in your closet, and you certainly won't see yourself coming and going. There are some rules to follow to keep you from looking like Helter-Skelter, and those are all included too.
And this month if you're in the Oklahoma City area, I'm doing a talk on the Christian Dior shows - from the V&A to Dallas, Dior is showing up everywhere - why?....and what's the big deal? Well, I'll tell you - and the chapter at OKC is very active and a lot of fun. It's going to be July 11th at the Will Rogers Garden Center at 6:30 in the evening.
And YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS - Finally a new update on the classic summer shirt coverup, or basic shirt/jacket or simply a great shirt from BurdaStyle (which means it's totally downloadable)! I've been using a very old pattern from BurdaStyle as my go to shirt pattern, and am thrilled to see this pattern out. One thing - it has an icky flounce thing on back, but this is so easy to leave out, cause the shirt is
kickin'! Click here to see the shirt and download it.
Whew!!! A lot going on this week!
I don't say this every week, but if there's anything you would like for me to write about, send it on - all you have to do is
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PS - I do a lot of posting on Facebook as both Claire Kennedy and SewingArtistry - if you want to friend me to check out the goodies over there for free!
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