Four months ago, at the constant urging of my husband, I quit a job that was making me angry and resentful and began working instead on trying to dismiss the guilt I’ve always felt for wanting to do something that a) doesn’t require the multiple college degrees I hold, and b) doesn’t feel like a job because of its sheer awesomeness.
For years I’ve designed and sewn skating and dance outfits as a…wait for the dirty word…hobby. But in September 2013, I realized that working in a place where mediocrity is rewarded and you get paid the same whether you are fabulous or absolutely disgustingly lazy and incompetent, was making me nuts; so I knew something had to change. My husband was sick of my complaining, my not sleeping because my sewing was relegated to the wee hours of the morning, and stepping on all the straight pins I inevitably dropped on the dining room floor; so he knew something had to change, too.
So we did it. In one whirlwind month, we turned half of our very large garage into a bona fide shop. A little creativity and reuse of excess furniture, a marathon day of filing business and licensing paperwork all over the county, a slightly creepy but nonetheless amusing exploration of a nearby warehouse where old store mannequins and retail accoutrements go to die, and several trips to IKEA later, and this is what I have:
On the left you can see Marie, as in Marie Antoinette, our headless mannequin with magnetic arms that is a perfect Firefly Fabrics stock size Adult Small, and our yet-to-be-named adjustable child size dressform. You can’t see Buttsy, our waist-to-thigh child butt mannequin for skirt adjustments, and Peg, our oldest but dearest ladies’ dressform, so named because of the peg stand that sticks out of her nether regions (yes, I did let the kids name them, obviously).
Behind the camera is the sewing area, with my two machines and my daughter’s Christmas gift (her first sewing machine), my huge cutting table, the shelves that will eventually hold about eighty full bolts of fabric but now just house thirty or so two-yard sample pieces and three circular racks full of dozens of bags of rhinestones, and a seriously sick amount of color coded, separated and organized scraps of spandex and other stretch fabric, for when I only need 1/4 yard or so of “something green but not too green” or “six shades of sparkly blue — you can do that, can’t you?” Someday I’ll post those photos too, but hey, right now it’s all about the crystal chandelier.
Leave No Stone Unglued 