Placement Presentation

I liked giving my presentation. I felt people were quite interested when I was talking. I don't think people had given construction much thought as a career path. At the beginning of last year, nearly everyone wanted to be a designer. With a couple wanting to be pattern cutters. Now everyone seems to want to be a pattern cutter. And I think a few people have chosen sample seamstress as a future career.

Since doing this work experience, I have also got the possibility of going to a couture sample shop on Sloane Street in London. And Burberry!!! Both very exciting, I just hope I have enough time to fit them both in within my workload as I'm not doing the third year so can't do them for the 3 month placement next year.

This is the presentation I gave, but I didn't include any of the writing as I think if you put all of your writing on the slides for people to read, there's no point in you giving the presentation. You might as well just let people read it themselves. But here is what I wrote down as a guide for myself to prevent choking. I wanted to record myself doing it but literally only thought about doing it once I sat back down. Big shame!

Placement presentation

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Stuff to say

About fashion enter

At The Workshop they have a wide client base of designers. The designers send their designs to create the first made-up sample of a garment.  Fashion Enter has over 80 designers that they work with. including Asos.com, Jaeger, Coast and many others. Working at Enter Fashion was a great insight into the work of sample machinists.  I got a first hand insight into what the job really involves.

The life of a sample seamstress

A typical days duties for the seamstresses that worked here involved arriving at 8.30am and sewing. They had a 30 minute lunch break at 12.30pm and then continued sewing until 5.30pm. If they hadn’t finished or had a lot to get done they would be there after 5.30pm when I left, and were often there before I arrived at 8.30. There was a box on a table full of brown pattern envelopes filled with the garments to be created that day. The seamstresses would take an envelope and make that. At the end of the day everything that was made was hung up on a wall and sent out to the designer via courier.

My time at the workshop

I spent the first six days making t-shirts. I was happy to get stuck into sewing straight away cause I was worried I might not get to do much. While I was there I realised that  I will need a lot of practice if I want to succeed in the world of sample machinery. Once all the t-shirts were done I made bags for two days and they seemed quite impressed when I handed over all the bags I had made. They were quite simple but involved a lot more than the t-shirts so I preferred making them. As well as the bags and the t-shirts I did a roll hem on a whole roll of chiffon, which may sound tedious but I quite enjoyed it. They were all impressed how quickly I did it. On my final day I made the toile for age 6 girls shorts. The sample shorts they gave me to work from were Stella McCartney for Baby Gap but I think they may have just copied the pattern for a different company to use. They often copied patterns that designers brought in although I’m not sure what they would do with them after.

Within the building there were 8 seamstresses, 2 pattern cutters, a garment technologist and the office workers.

They were all very good at their job and had clearly been sewing for many years. One of the girls Kasha told me when she was younger she tried to make a pair of trousers and cut out the front and the back without any additional crotch pieces. After watching them machine through really complicated dresses and trousers with ease it was nice to be reminded that everyone has to start somewhere.