I have finally settled into a routine; after fluffing around manically and feeling as though I'm getting nothing done for the past several weeks, I now have an organised weekly schedule. Each day is focussed on one aspect of the business that I have to work on, Wednesdays are admin days (always the dullest of days), Thursday is sewing day and Mondays have now become my free design day. In short I spend the day in my design studio trying to create something new without the pressure of deadlines for a show or a shoot. I simply decide what I want to make and let my creativity run free. Mondays are becoming my favourite day of the week; I only seem to get Monday-itus on Tuesdays now when I have to get up at 7am for my 10hr day (at my real job).
So far, this free design day has proven to be both frustrating (when I try to force something that just doesn’t want to work) and liberating (when something comes together perfectly). The double edged sword of creativity does happen to cut me from time to time, but I never bleed for long. I think it must be the thrill of “the new” that gets me back on my horse.
The challenge this week was to craft something entirely different to my norm, in fact I decided not to make any clothing at all. I had a bunch of ribbon lying around that I had originally purchased for a dress, but after finding it too stiff to sew on to my garment, I had replaced it with something softer and simply thrown it in my hat box and forgotten about it. I always had the intention of creating new headpieces but hadn’t a clue where to start.
The process took me all day as I fiddled with glue, sewed ribbon onto material, pulled apart silk flowers and burnt myself on my lighter (only way to seal the end of a ribbon is to melt it). By about 5pm I finally had some success and although I ended up changing several designs and actually threw one out as it was so aesthetically unpleasant, I had a ball!
I’ve worn both the plain black and the black and pink clips now and both seemed to get a good response from several different admirers, so I’ll continue to experiment with this new headpiece fascination I have. I have some idea of what I’m doing now, so hopefully next Monday I’ll come out of my design day with several new pieces, then I can begin selling them, and perhaps then I might feel like a real designer.
