Today will be a quick update. Summer has arrived and things are moving! I met with the team at Sew Co. in May to hand off the work on the final blouses for the 100 Blouses Project and to drop off materials. It was such a breath of fresh air to get so much support and expertise with a group that really gets our mission to bring back sewing as a quality job in our communities. It is really a partnership beyond our wildest expectations. And it is having an immediate impact on the quality of our work. For example, their wonderful super talented pattern maker Giovanni Daina-Pelermo suggested an update that will make the collar stronger.
We are currently finalizing the details on the sample and then Sew Co. will make the first 5 blouses. Sew Co. is going to be carefully tracking their time spent on each aspect of production so that we can price out the larger, 100 Blouses Project, track down some additional funding and accept more clients. It has been interesting to simultaneously think through the current production and how it can be representative of custom fit apparel manufacturing going forward. For example – the utility of including a patterned fabric in this pricing exercise so we can understand how much more time that will add to production costs (patterned fabrics have to be carefully cut and lined up with the pattern so that the fabric pattern looks nice when it is transformed into a garment).
In the coming weeks I will be resuming work getting the remaining 5 blouses fitted from the Founder’s Circle.
I am going to leave this update short and sweet for today. I hope you are enjoying a beautiful start to the summer. Thank you so much for all your support!
Reid