Sunday, October 28, 2012

A Wish Come True- Swatch Magic!

Hello everyone! Week five has already passed and now week six starts tomorrow with a visit from Hurricane Sandy!

This past week felt like it flew by! I spent a lot of time finishing up the costing from the photo shoot. I actually finished it all on Thursday. I made labels and markers too.

Betsy, the head designer, asked me to swatch some custom orders. I had to go out into the factory and find several different fabrics and cut swatches from them. Some of the fabric rolls were all the way up on the very top shelves of the units. I climbed up the tallest ladder I could find and cut away. The first time, I had pretty dull scissors. That was horrible because I could not get the pieces to cut easily and I was pretty high up. Once I had my good fabric cutting scissors, I cut swatches in no time! I swatched a custom order for a woman in Australia who wanted a ballet style with a tulle skirt and a zsa zsa fabric bodice with sequin trim on both the skirt, arm poufs, and leotard. I had to go find the different sequins in all the correct colors. This was a scavenger hunt as well because there are a ton of different sequins such as #9000, #5146, #60, and etc. These numbers all separate the different types by how many individual sequins are on a strand or how thick the strand is. I had to find iridescent sequin that was in #9000 and #5146. This was difficult because for aqua and pink we have a large selection-- there is mint, regular aqua, clear aqua, light pink, candy pink, fuchsia. Luckily, my best judgement was correct and I found everything I needed to.

I had also swatched size sets last Friday for Stephanie. She was so happy with me and impressed with how well I had done! I did not ask for anyone's help swatching, nor did I make any mistakes or get any wrong fabrics--which, trust me, is not hard to do since so many with sequins or silver dots look the same. She and the other pattern makers discussed it and they decided to give me an award! The award is just a goofy little office thing that they give to the people who do something above and beyond: Lisa Randolph Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence. This really made my week!
If you see my name is now listed, along with the reasoning, "PPSS Swatch Magic".
This week is Halloween, so I have to finish my costume for Wednesday and hope that it works out! This storm could really put a damper on everything!

I hope everyone stays safe and dry during this storm!

Stay tuned for more after Frankenstorm!

-Victoria

3 comments:

  1. That is so fun you get to work with all the fabrics. As someone who sews, selecting fabrics is definitely the most exciting part of making a garment. The fabrics that you get to work with must be absolutely beautiful since you are working for a dance company.

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  2. That is great experience to learn about different fabrics. I just started this week learning a good amount of fabrics and terms, there are so many fabrics and many many different terms to classify each. I recognize a lot of names from my previous internship when co-workers would discuss them. And am glad I can identify some now and understand when they are discussed in the future! I really enjoyed learning the fabrics and terms too. It feels professional to know the terms..:)

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  3. The different fabrics are really beautiful! I really want to make something using this one sequin laced fabric! I just have not decided what! But it really is amazing how much you learn just from being exposed to all the fabric and people.

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