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State of the Bill
Aug. 26th, 2013 10:04It is not often that I have a weekend like the one that just passed, and I'm grateful. Put in about eight hours sewing on Saturday, and twelve on Sunday. A prisoner of my costume shop, my time was spent catching up on orders that had fallen behind. With Labor Day and Kansas City Irish Fest coming up, it's hectic and insanely stressful around the Morris' house.
Dresses
We've taken on the job of making the dance dresses for the Driscoll School of Irish Dance where the kids attend. Dancers are accustomed to paying real money for their stuff and thus don't blink when you throw out a number that sounds reasonable, so you would think that would be lucrative, but you'd be wrong. At least so far. When you factor in driving to fittings, alterations, and the simple fact that these dresses take a long time to build in the first place, we're making barely minimum wage. (For the record, on shirts and tights, it's comfortably more than that.)
It's not that the dresses are complicated, but there's a lot of pieces. The skirts alone have eighteen pieces (including the lining), all put together with straight seams, but each seam has to be bound, the pattern adjusted on the fly for each dancer. What started out as a, "All you have to do is assemble the pieces" kind of job (and was bid as such) has turned into custom tailoring for each one. Twelve hours for any garment is too long, especially at these prices.
For a variety of reasons I won't write publicly, we can't just walk away from the dresses. As such, I can't market Seamlyne as heavily as I want to, pushing products I know I can make a living on. Michelle says she'll take over the "heavy lifting" on the dresses so all I have to do is set the zipper and attach the bodice and rhinestone trim. I hope she's right.
Dresses
We've taken on the job of making the dance dresses for the Driscoll School of Irish Dance where the kids attend. Dancers are accustomed to paying real money for their stuff and thus don't blink when you throw out a number that sounds reasonable, so you would think that would be lucrative, but you'd be wrong. At least so far. When you factor in driving to fittings, alterations, and the simple fact that these dresses take a long time to build in the first place, we're making barely minimum wage. (For the record, on shirts and tights, it's comfortably more than that.)
It's not that the dresses are complicated, but there's a lot of pieces. The skirts alone have eighteen pieces (including the lining), all put together with straight seams, but each seam has to be bound, the pattern adjusted on the fly for each dancer. What started out as a, "All you have to do is assemble the pieces" kind of job (and was bid as such) has turned into custom tailoring for each one. Twelve hours for any garment is too long, especially at these prices.
For a variety of reasons I won't write publicly, we can't just walk away from the dresses. As such, I can't market Seamlyne as heavily as I want to, pushing products I know I can make a living on. Michelle says she'll take over the "heavy lifting" on the dresses so all I have to do is set the zipper and attach the bodice and rhinestone trim. I hope she's right.