back in the real world!

OK, I know I’ve been really quite lately, but this time I have a really good excuse!  I GOT A JOB!!!

Yes, really, a real, paying, 9 to 5 job.

Despite sending literally hundreds of applications off into the black hole of the internet, the job I ended up with I didn’t actually apply for.  In a roundabout sort of way I can sort of thank the Auckland Sewing collective for throwing me into the right path.  A couple of months ago we met up in a café in Mount Albert one Sunday morning.  I arrived a few minutes early so went and ordered (and paid for incidentally) my coffee and while I was queuing at the cash register I spotted a vague acquaintance, sort of friend who I hadn’t seen for literally years.  We exchanged the usual greetings and I mentioned that I had been made redundant and was looking for work if he heard of anything (because I’d been job hunting for so long that I have no shame).  The coffee arrived and I went and found the other sewists and had a lovely get together.

I thought nothing more of the encounter until about two weeks later when I got a call from him.  He’d just had a resignation, she didn’t really want to work her notice and had only been there about a month so didn’t really have anything useful to handover.  He didn’t want to go through the whole advertising, hundreds of cv’s and interviewing again, so could I start on Monday?

So... I’m gainfully employed again!  

I can at long last wear the working wardrobe that I have been sewing for the last eleven months.   

It’s a fairly casual environment, so I started with black pants and a shirt that I made over Christmas.   

I decided to spend some time perfecting the classic shirt.  I drafted a basic shirt and got the fit right even over the bust, which is always an issue for me.  I had a white shirting with a self coloured stripe that I'd bought on line for $1.20 a metre.  I made a plain white shirt with it intending it to be a sort of wearble muslin, but I was happy withn the finished shirt:

I then decided that I wanted to replicate the shaping of this cardigan in a woven fabric and shirt type design.  starting from the pattern that I had perfected I put the stripe across the shirt rather than up and down and played with pleats into the button band:

It took a bit of fiddling to get it right and the pleats changed the direction of the stripes at the top half of the front, but it isn’t a bad effect, and like the stretch cardi that I made it is a great shape for the larger than B cup bust without an excessive amount of fabric floating round the waist.  

I even wore this jacket, which I wasn’t in love with when I made it, but actually doesn’t look too bad.

The job is very close to a railway station on the same line as where I live, so Im taking the train to work.  It’s a direct trip and I couldn’t drive it in time that the train takes.  I pour the last of the coffee into my travel mug …

 

Yes, I made my coffee mug an embroidered coat!

… as I leave for the station, and sit on the train with my ipod and knitting (yes I am that mad woman who knits on the train), and usually by the time I’ve finished my coffee the train is just arriving at work.  It’s a really civilised way to commute, which is also improving my knitting output!

The one down side of having a job is a lack of time to doing sewing related stuff.   

I was really interested in Project Indie and intended to put in one of my recent designs that I had drafted.  While drafting it in multiple sizes was quite simple, the process of digitising it required way more time and IT skills than I have.  I spent two weekends trying to figure out how to do it, and feeling guilty about doing anything else before it dawned on me that I was spoiling my weekends and not sewing stuff that I was interested in because I thought I “should” get a pattern entered.  What was I thinking? While it might have made sense when I had the time, I have a new job which I’m having to get to grips with.  I don’t have the IT skills, nor the brain space to learn at the moment.  All I was doing was spoiling my weekends feeling guilty about not being able to do it.  So I’ve let that one go.  I’m just not techie savvy enough.

In the meantime I’m enjoying being back at work and enjoying having more than 50c left at the end of the week.  I could even buy some more fabric!