The Big Tease

This is the only detail I plan to show of the apron project I've been working on for Lark Books. Although I've been given permission to show it completely as long as I don't tell you how to make it, I feel somehow that showing you the design will ruin the punchline and possibly jinx me in this rather large moment of my small life. However, I want to commemorate this wonderful day (the day I send out the apron, instructions, and all necessary paperwork) with a peek. Just a tiny detail of what is to come.

This is a detail of the project I submitted which has now undergone significant fabric changes and a few minor design changes. This won't ruin your surprise, I promise. I share this picture because whenever I see it I want to eat those buttons or somehow inhale the fabric. This picture reminds me of the feverish two days I spent in the last days of my shop studio before being packed up; draping, drafting, sketching, and redrafting, to come up with something I felt really good about. During the hours I spent designing this apron I was in my element, doing the only other thing (besides writing) that I know for a fact I was born to do. Designing and drafting is as natural and as invigorating to me as breathing. I want to do more of it.

Here is one of the most exciting packages I have ever put together. It isn't a book I've written, it isn't a bundle of poetry, nor is it filled with articles for submission, which is perhaps what I imagined would be my first taste of being published. I really never imagined that the first thing of mine to be officially published would be one of my patterns. Isn't it funny how the lines of my two passions have been crossed?

I remember back when I was the shipping manager at Weston Wear Apparel daydreaming about the day I would get my break as a pattern drafter. I applied for jobs at Joe Boxer, at Jessica McClintock, and probably ten other design labels and never got my break. Then I finally got work as a design assistant at Mulberry Neckwear which turned into a job as the swatcher. A job I loved immensely. Yet, still I hadn't gone quite in the direction I had been sure I should be headed when I was seven years old, planning my life. I drafted custom costumes but custom work is tedious (usually) and no one wants to pay you for doing 14 hours of hand stitching on Victorian corsets.

So here I am. Jobless, except for my evolving company which is not paying the bills as of yet, and I am sending off my first pattern for publication. I just wanted to stop and enjoy this moment. You can be poor and be facing penury in the worst way, staring down the mountain of debt and uncertainty, yet still have a triumph in which you achieve something you've always hoped to achieve.

I'm really excited! The Universe is a lot less omniscient than I thought if it doesn't know how deeply thankful I am for all my good fortune.