dvmCindy
Wheee! What a fun trip. I love seeing the U-S-of-A! The weather totally cooperated and we had some beautiful sunny days. I hear it rained in Baltimore the entire week I was gone! From the bottom of my heart I have to thank the organizers! It was the best of the three PR Weekends (LA, NYC, Portland) I’ve been to.
Jaeng who designed the JJ Blouse on BurdaStyle and I
Deepika and Emilie from Jalie Patterns
So, what is it we like about PR Weekends? You get to meet your friends in real life. You’ll sit up late into the night talking about sewing, boys and makeup. It’s just a hoot.
Loohoo44 (Leslie) and Christina at Sunday Brunch
What else do you do? Try on your friend’s clothes! Emilie from Jalie Patterns was there and I’m going to try my first Jalie now.
Photo Courtesy of AssortedNotions.Blogspot.com
I’m also all over and I mean ALL OVER making a trench coat from my red Burberry fabric. The trench is MAGICAL. I don’t even like myself in black! I got five inches taller and dropped two sizes in Leslie’s trench. I am also going to seriously work on my posture (and getting my hair all one color again). Patti Palmer told me I had forward shoulders and rounded upper back. I shrugged it off until I saw the photos from the weekend on Flickr. Yikes.
On Saturday, Patti Palmer did an overview of her fit workshop. It was really interesting to hear what she had to say about pattern companies, thier business models and what the trends were.
- When her first McCall’s jacket pattern came out in the 80s, it sold 20,000 in the first week
- Pattern shelf life is now 18 - 34 mos
- 2,000 pattern sales a month is average. 3 – 4k make it a bestseller.
- And ONE pattern at McCall’s takes about $40,000 to produce. Think about some of the not so loveable patterns they come up with. That took $40,000 to produce. Crazy.
- Patterns have to sell about 1,500 – 2,000 a month to stay viable
On the yellow school bus for fabric! I bought (just 12 yards) five cuts:
- Denim backed sherpa
- Two basic knits
- Bamboo denim (above) and cotton voile
There is a destination (and photos) of these fabrics. I’ll chat about that over the weekend.
MelissaB, Nancywin, myself and dvmCindy
Whew. So, I’m back home pre-treating and dreaming of my next project!
