There's a Web site called Fashion-Incubator.com that is an amazing resource for sewers, but which is geared toward "design entrepreneurs" of various types. The woman who runs it is Kathleen Fasanella, also author of "The Entrepreneur's Guide to Sewn Product Manufacturing." (I'm pitching her book because it's amazing. It's an insider's guide to the entire fashion design industry, and all the stuff you really need to know before you march in and make an ass of yourself.) I own and have read the book, and I highly recommend it. You can buy it through the site above.
Kathleen is also a fellow New Mexican, coincidentally. I'm not sure if she's exceedingly nice and helpful to everybody, or if she's so helpful to me because I'm just a couple billion hops, skips and jumps away up I-25 through the God-awful and never-ending desert.
So, I was on Fashion-Incubator asking a question about something I was having trouble with. (Oh, you know all about that stupid yellow and black dress with the V-neck I've been griping about.) Well, Kathleen (I really have never met her in person, so I don't know why I think I'm on a first-name basis with her) mentions to me that an Albuquerque patternmaker needs an assistant. And so I contact her, and three days later, I'm hired.
It's very flexible, part-time hours, so I can keep my full-time job. I will help with simple stuff, like labeling and checking patterns, but from what she has told me, there's immense room for learning, so I hope for it to be sort of an apprenticeship, in a way. I'll do what she needs me to do, but just through observation of how it all works, I think I'll learn so much.
It's a weird feeling when you trudge through the daily grind doing something you like and being darn glad you have a job in this horrible economy. But all the while, you think, "if I could get paid to do what I truly love, would this be it?" And here, somebody is going to pay me to work in a field that I really, really want to explore.
And, so, wish me luck!
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