Persevering Maleficent
“What did you make?”
Go through a mental check list in my head...I know I put away the paper rolls that had littered the floor. I know I put away my hip curve, the meter stick (an antique from the Manola general store), the right angle I stole from my brother’s shop (I know you asked about it, sorry, I lied and you’re not getting it back) and my bendy ruler from elementary school (sparkles and all). I know I put the crayons and pencils away, but maybe one of them rolled under the table making friends with the dust bunnies, no, I know I cleaned under there to make sure. Did I leave fabric? Fibers? What?
“Jen, I’m currently scraping red nail polish off my floors…what did you do?”
Apparently, crawling around on a white floor with red nail polish on your toes leaves an amazing map of where you’ve been. One my mom has not shown any appreciation in. You would think that after the first time doing this, I would have learned, but of course I couldn’t do that. Nor could I get the proper equipment (but that’s for later) so I didn’t have to be like a dog chasing its tail. That’s what the red marks made it look like I was doing, not creating patterns, but going in circles with no apparent purpose.
Making garment patterns is an art. One that I have not at all mastered and probably never will. It’s frustrating and yes, it feels like all you do is go in circles getting nowhere. The first time I was at home making a pattern, I was replicating a jacket I found online. I loved how edgy it was with all the zipper accents and the studs and double lapel collar. Damn those things.
I think anyone who makes patterns from scratch absolutely hates creating collars, at least that’s the feeling I get. The first one I made while in Olds was a peter pan collar. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. I was confident, I could do any pattern! Until I tackled a version of Sleeping Beauty’s Maleficent collar. Have you ever thought about how fabric can stay standing so perfectly? Well I didn’t until I was trying to make cotton stand straight up when all it wanted to do was wilt and look like an overwatered, drowned plant.
It took days to get it. Not hours, but days and in the end, I didn’t even get it right. It did work though. It stood properly, cradling the wearer's head while not flopping around or trying to decapitate them with its stiffness, but it was still wrong. The intricate network of darts was not what was supposed to be used and to be honest, I never did learn the proper way of making a stand collar like the disney characters wore (if there even is such a thing as a right way, wire and interfacing are correct). It didn’t matter though. I wore that toile (which is a cheap fabric version of the garment to test the fabric) so proud. I was a very self conscious person and here I was prancing around in a see through dress with only my undergarments under it, showing everyone from my class I was as epic and stubborn as Maleficent.
That’s probably a bad reference seeing as Maleficent did die in Sleeping Beauty, but damn, did she have perseverance in spreading evil and in pattern making you need to have perseverance and you have to be stubborn. I don’t mean being stubborn in the way that you won’t change and adapt to what isn’t working (or the project will not make it like Maleficent), what I mean is, you have to be stubborn enough to continue going in circles chasing your tail and not give in.
A lot of projects make it onto paper but never manifest into anything but the blueprint stage. They are so covered in colors and scribbles and random markings that they are almost illegible and littered with corrections, time, and effort. Or they make it to the toile and get left there because nothing about it works. The arm holes too big, the shoulders too far back, the chest pointed, the sleeves or pant legs twisted, or a multitude of the other millions upon billions of flaws that can and will happen when trying on a garment pattern for the first time.
Perseverance is a must so a project doesn’t end in, “well I fucked that up good, let’s do a different one.” There has to be the will to do it again and again. That jacket that I was drafting and leaving all the red marks around the house is still not done. The pattern, got it. The toile, got it. The fashion fabric; it’s getting there. It’s been three years now that I have worked on this project. Three years full of a great deal of perseverance. A multitude of issues occurred. For one, there are two collars. Two. One over the other. Getting a collar to roll just right can be a challenge, but getting two? I struggled to get them lined up and the right size as to not make the jacket look clownish. That alone, took two years to perfect.
Now this isn’t constant work. In between this (people would probably call this a hobby of mine, but it’s more than just that to me) I’ve done more mending then I thought possible, started another degree and got three different jobs. Life does happen and projects can be put down (not always possible, but happens). Now I know if I sat down for a week and really went for it, I could have this jacket done. If I did another jacket and another and another I could get down to a pattern a day, a toile a day, and the garment done in two (probably would get better than this, but just as an example). This wouldn’t be possible though if I would have just gave up and said I can’t create collars. Everything would have a peter pan collar and that just isn’t who I am. Perseverance and stubbornness wouldn’t allow that to happen.
I wanted to give up, trust me I did. I wasn’t making this jacket for a mark and I wasn’t making this jacket for someone else. Perseverance of going around in that circle over and over again has allowed this project to, at this second, be almost completed and me to learn a lot about patterns for future reference (how to create structure, mix stretch and non stretch to name a few). It’s challenging to make patterns, especially when trying out new styles, but it is always worth the end result. Even when I fail at a project, I know what not to do next time see how I can be better.
