Home sewing now and then.

[Henry Hall]

This is not really 'home sewing' but I know a couple of girls from a fashion school and they had signed up to the same cutting course I joined. They ended up bewildered and not enjoying themselves at the beginning. At the start of the course they were announcing (loudly) that they had been interested in sewing from youth and were fashion school graduates, but it soon became clear they were all at sea.

The course there was old-fashioned (in a good way) and I was fairly astonished that they had no idea how ordinary drafts work. They kept making all kinds of ridiculous changes to the patterns. Finally they had to be told to just follow the procedure as given.

I discovered they had joined because they had attempted to set up a small boutique and couldn't afford the prices they had been paying for people to create and draft actual patterns...or for people to sew them together! Up to then I hadn't realised that fashion schools are not necessarily places where construction plays a prominent role.

These two live around the same area as me, so we got together to work on 'homework' and also actual sewing. I'd say I showed them more than they showed me and considering one of them still had a debt from higher education, it's rather a travesty.

[spookietoo]

Henry- I know what you mean about the education cost. I have a degree in Interior Design. My course load focused on space planning - mostly how to make workplaces work. If you couldn't coordinate fabric and wallpaper to begin with, you didn't need to be in the program at all.

Shortly after graduation, i went to a local catalogue counter to order some new drafting equipment. The girl working the counter saw my purchase and exclaimed, "Oh, you must be in architecture." I replied, "No, Interior Design". She looked puzzled and asked why I would need such things. When I told her they were for my drawings, she was still confused. Turns out she was in a 4 year "Interior Design" program in another state and was entering her Senior year, yet none of her classes taught or required drafting ( no computers then). All of her classes involved color picking and moving little pieces of plastic furniture around on a predrawn floor plan. All of them. I wanted to tell her she should sue  for her tuition back, but I was afraid the concept would stretch her limited brain cells a bit too far. Poor thing.

At this point, I can't think of anything more useless than a fashion degree. Fashion is so very dead. My neice, an artsy 29 year old architect, and her friends buy style- not "fashion".  Now if they would only learn something about quality.