Dear readers,Forgive me in advance for the ramblings. To ameliorate it, paragraphs will be separated by pictures from the white linen pants I made 3 months ago. Since then I change the waistband to the same rectangular waistband as my linen shorts.
I feel funny. I have pictures of finished garments to show and I don't write the posts. I even love the said garments but talking about them is not as exciting anymore. The fact that they were all completed between 1 and 3 months ago may have something to do with that... So what to do? The blog is going to be 2 years old very soon. I keep enjoying it but I'm still looking for my "voice" (OMG that sounds so lame), or at least looking for something that sounds like who I am IRL.Also, I just discovered GOMI... Such a relief to read what my little mean french inner voice has been saying!! Of course, I don't agree with everything (who could?) but some points really resonated with me. Since sewing became so prominent online, maybe we lost something on the way.
When I started sewing, I also got internet access. But in 1999, not many sewing resources were available online, especially not in French! Everything was about forums back then and closed groups. I use to be part of one called affinitiz...Thus to learn, I read books, bought burda magazines, took classes with an old lady and... I failed and failed and failed many projects. At least, there was no one to show them too. Except my critical French mom (hey mom!). Having them all around the blog would be kind of embarassing, with their unraveling seam allowances, blown seams from the absence of ANY wearing ease and their highly impractical sleeves.http://www.pinterest.com/pin/17029304815510173/However, since that day, I had the feeling that something was missing in the home sewing pattern industry. Something that would allow us to achieve results closer to high-end RTW: the ability to follow trends before they are translated in the mass-market, beautiful finishings, a focus on higher-end materials, etc.Fast forward to the mid 2000s, this is IT! Burdastyle website has been launched, we are all talking about open source sewing, a website called "Inner French Girl" is around and awesome (do you remember??), fashion-incubator, the first sewing blogs . Such an exciting time!
And now here we are, in 2014, and it's all about pattern releases, book deals, fabric blogging networks, sewalongs and blog tours. I cannot say that I did not want to be part of it. I love shiny stuff! But I don't have the time and the skills it takes to jump there. Plus, I miss the time when we were talking about collaborative sewing, when the Selfish Seamstress was throwing patterns at the world and when PR was a mandatory stop before spending 15 EUROS on a Vogue pattern!Going back to GOMI, and to the pattern testing controversy, I'm not saying that bloggers should stop releasing patterns and getting book deals. As long as people buy them, they should keep on releasing them!! However, I believe that a collaborative approach could help the ones that are just bored with Peter Pan collar tutorials. The new sewing experts are here to teach beginners (and that's great) or to underline stuff in silk organza (please don't make me!! I promise I will be a good girl!!).
So I'm offering an experiment. In the coming weeks, I will throw a free pattern on the blog. It will be a pencil skirt. Initially graded in 3 sizes, on the small spectrum of sizing range, because that's the one I know. I will take pictures of my construction steps to put them here too. And then let's all pattern test!! If people wants to tell me that explanations are poor, the pattern needs improvements, they can grade it to bigger sizes, the pdf layout is bad or whatever, let's have it! And maybe, MAYBE, one pencil skirt at a time, we can work towards patterns fit (haha) our needs better. On the other hand, it is very possible that nobody cares, anyway, let's at least talk about it!