Organizing a disorganized state of being

That title doesn’t mean a whole lot, except that I am finally trying to get the store really organized. I could be organizing for the rest of my life and it would never be to my liking. There will always be something out of place and without a place to go.

Right now I’m focusing on my office and getting that organized. Unfortunately when I “clean” an area, half the stuff migrates to another space. Then I need to clean that space, that random box of stuff either goes back to the original space or into another box hidden from view.

It becomes a circle, never finding an end to the cycle.

Today the circle gets a detour. I plan to get a filing cabinet to store all those random papers just sitting in piles around the store on tables, behind boxes and in binders.

Maybe I’ll even tackle that box of random trims that just keeps growing.

But this is all leading up to my major goal of getting back to work on the pattern drafting book, completely unrelated to organizing.

Bra book update now available

I have been pretty sick the last few days so I have taken advantage of all the couch time to make the changes to the book. I haven’t updated the ebook or physical book completely, but you can download this file. This incorporates all the major changes I have found that needed to be addressed.

If, in your own work, you have discovered other changes that you would recommend, please email me and let me know so I can review them and get those changes taken care of.

I am still working on the patterns. They take forever to do and I think I found another issue with the one I was grading, but thats because I didn’t use the correct file. Ahh!

Anyway, I really hope this sore throat goes away soon. It is driving me mad!

BTW- Emily started something really cute today. Well, maybe not cute, but I found it interesting. She spends most of her day crawling around playing with things on the floor. On 4 separate occasions, she has crawled up to me, cried, and when I picked her up, realized she was telling me her diaper needed changing. Too bad she doesn’t do that do David who is sitting across the room from me. And if she is, he must be ignoring her.

Life moves on whether we are ready or not

Despite my rough week physically, I had a relatively great week business wise. I keep trying to look at things in a positive light. One thing wasn’t meant to be, so something better could come to fruition. I am going to concentrate on healing and building up my business. The rest will come as it comes.

Over the summer I looked into offering a Groupon to help people find out about my business. I was a little nervous about offering my services for “practically free,” but I knew I had to make some sacrifices in order to spread the word. I have been a little disappointed by how Groupon works. They don’t promote as they used to and I keep discovering new “fees” that they are tacking on. For a $45 class, they are selling it for $20 and I get $9.50. That buys me 2 gallons, almost 3 gallons of gas to get to work for 2-3 days.

I have sold 15 in a little over a month. Its not fabulous, but I’m scheduling classes now and only half of the registered students are coming from Groupon. What’s even better is that every person who has taken a class wants to take more. I was only hoping for a 25% return rate, but a 100% return rate is phenomenal. It proves that my vision has merit.

I am actually really excited that I’m receiving such a positive response to what I’m trying to achieve. I will look back on this time in 5 years and say to my husband “Remember when I had that idea about starting a school? Well look at it now!”

Update on revised patterns/instructions for the bra book: I have regraded size 34 and 36 already and have done all the revised illustrations for the book. Because it takes forever for me to do everything, I hope to get the revisions for the book done by the first and hopefully have the patterns done around that time as well. Providing there aren’t any other obstacles I would like to do a set of patterns for size 28, 42, 44 and 46. I tried doing them previously, but the shapes did not look right, so I never completed them.

I am still doing all 2 piece cups for the download, but I’ll be experimenting on a 3 or 4 piece cup draft over the next few months as I have time. Time…..I often wonder how I can get more of it……Maybe get a babysitter…..

A difficult post to share

For the past 5 weeks I’ve been wanting to scream from the rooftops “I’m having a baby.” I shared the news with friends and family the day I found out, but I’ve tried to not get emotional about it because I have miscarried in the past.

The experience in the past was pretty terrible. We hadn’t planned our first pregnancy, but we were excited. We only knew for a week before I lost it. The pain was worse than any period I ever had. I spent the night in the ER as I could not walk and passed out due to the pain. I felt ashamed to speak about it. I was terrified that I did something that caused my loss.

It wasn’t until after we reached 12 weeks with Emily that I started to feel a little relief, but I was still nervous. I finally talked to friends about my experience. I wished I had spoken to friends when it happened, as I would have understood that it was very common, but just a taboo subject. In fact, 25% of pregnancies are lost due to miscarriage.

It took me a while to understand and comprehend that I did not cause it, although it was always in the back of my head that maybe I could have done something more.

Today I am having to relive that day. I am again lying down in pain and agony. I’m trying to come to terms with the fact that the child I was going to have will not be born. My ideal plan of my kids being 18 months apart will not happen. I have to wait even longer until I meet my second child. I will no longer be 37 when my next child will be born, but that’s not really the point. I’m grieving for a child I never knew, a heartbeat I never heard and an ultrasound I never saw.

I know I will have my second child when it is time and meant to be. I love my daughter with all my heart and I will cherish our time together while its just her.

Busy Busy Busy

I have had quite a busy few weeks. I have finally created a draft I am happy with. I have been working on all the illustrations and new directions for the download (for current book readers). I have to test at least 2 different sizes to make sure the shapes and grading directions remain the same. This is where I might encounter a few hurdles.

I think I have some tiny alterations to make on the grading instructions, but my eyes started to cross after testing them for about 3 hours yesterday. It made sense when I wrote them, but once I put them into practice, I confused myself.

For the book, I drafted these patterns in Adobe Illustrator and had one confusing of a time grading them (also in Illustrator). I found a couple tricks to make grading easier in Illustrator, so I will try to do up a little tutorial on how to grade in Illustrator (which I’m sure you can also translate into other pattern drafting software).

As for the shop and everything else, its doing well. I have a Groupon for introductory classes, which I hope will bring in a few students, although Groupon has changed how they promote their offers. They no longer send out dedicated emails for offers, so basically I worked with them for over 2 months to have an offer sitting on the 12th page of a search in Groupon for things “near” Redlands.

The online classes are on a temporary hold – due to lack of time by my husband (my film crew). I’m working on bringing a few partners, but I’ve only had a few people express interest. I guess people aren’t really sure what a co-op is in the Inland Empire. I guess its time for me to educate!

Emily is crawling all over the place, so its getting harder for me to take her to the store to “contain” her to my child containment area. She’s been spending more and more days at the house with David so she can explore the whole house.

On another note- I am getting the shop a plotter printer! That means I can print out patterns for kits and for doing custom bras. Yeah- you heard it. I’m developing a set of patterns to do custom bras and bra fittings. Its going to take forever and a day to create a full range of fit samples for people to try, but I think I can do it. (Only 150 bras to make!) Maybe its time to train a small army of sewers. Wouldn’t that be awesome? I could have my own bonafide lingerie sewing factory in the middle of the Inland Empire.

Reality check- thats a fabulous idea, but I don’t see that happening in the near future.