Follow up and Exciting News!

Here are some pictures of the event that I was sewing like a manic for. I found that all the holidays prevented me from doing the blog work I needed. Then when the holidays were over we began a big project that I didn't want to tell ya about until I knew that we were going to be 100% in on it.

So...here it is. Rum and Couture, my designer line, will be 100% online now. We decided to close the boutique and find studio space and work on growing our online business! I really am excited about the big move. When we first started the brand it was out of my college dorm room. Then I moved into a space inside a salon to show my clothes. I then opened a full boutique on my own when finishing my schooling.

Now to the big world of ONLINE! I am so excited that we will be focusing on reaching a bigger audience than just the surrounding area of my shop. The biggest change will be that I won't be interacting with customers face to face anymore. All of my customer service will be online or on the phone.  I will miss that. But, dressing a bigger audience will be great! I feel like reaching out to more people will be very rewarding. I can't wait to share our designs with the world!

Next week we sign the lease! So March 1st we will be in a new stuido. I will be posting pictures of that for sure as we move it! Also, my intern will be working on marketing this semester and you'll be seeing some of her work on here!

Until next time, I'm designer dreaming

It's 1:03, Yea Sewing Marathon.

I had to start with that beautiful picture of organization. It's a store. Yes, I know. But, I really wish I could have all my stocked fabric waiting to be made into things looking that neat and artfully stored. I however have about thirty piles of scraps and several project piles with half finished pieces. 

The good news. We are rounding the end of the Holiday Line and it is so close to being done I am almost tasting the finishing threads. The entire design team is hunchback and stiff from cutting, pinning, and sewing for the last few weeks. Their brains are fried from finishing designing, pattern making, and event planning. 

But it is worth it. Friday we will be unveiling our entire Holiday 2014 Line. This is really exciting for us because in the spring we showed just a small portion of our spring 2013 line and it was received very well. This holiday line launch will be much bigger for us. Thanks for your support and patience while we work night and day to get ready. 

I really look up to all the other small, made in America, did it all yourself designers out there making their dreams come true. Because designer dreaming is not easy, but its worth it. Keep up the good work. 

Now, it's 1:03am. I have to wake up at 6am for another long day of sewing. So! Off to sleep. Keep tuned for how the show goes!

Until next time, I'm designer dreaming <3 .="" p="">

How my sewing marathon ended.

I was working ever so diligently for the last few days sewing my little heart out. With a Fashion Event to showcase my Holiday line just a week and a half from now I have been feeling the pressure to work as many hours as my tiny fingers and eyes can handle. I was doing so well. In fact, when my partner in crime has an appointment to go to I was so excited to say I stayed and worked through a potential break opportunity.

However, I am going to put it frankly. I got bit right in the butt by that decision. Literally. I was working along for almost two hours with out any major hiccup. [A miracle in itself.] Then right as I'm feeling the high of making real progress, I shovel my bottom half just a half of a foot over to get a betting angle on cutting out a dress, and I sit on my pin magnet.

I scared both dogs, both cats, probably the bearded dragon two rooms away, and myself with my initial response. Which was a low, almost manly, yell and then louder shrieking when I had to pull pins out of my left butt cheek. Literally they were jammed right into the side of my left hip/butt cheek. I now have two very large punctures in my left side. Each puncture was home to about three pins for what seemed like two hours but was probably just two seconds. [See attached picture for said vampire pins.]

Like the woman, Mikhaela Reid, from www.polkadotoverload.com I too have days where I feel like a total amateur and totally overloaded. She always write funny quips about her bad days where she feels like sewing won. That was one of those moments. I spend at least twenty to thirty minutes nursing both my bottom side and my dignity. I also put on a second pair of pants. Just for extra protection. Which was smart, because I almost sat on the magnet again being so jumpy trying to cut dresses out after.

And yes, I sew in an outfit almost identical to that one.

Until next time, I'm designer Dreaming!

How Pintrest Sparked my Holiday Window Interest

I have never really been obsessed with pintrest...until this holiday season rolled around. My friend Sarah was sending me pictures from pintrest so I finally opened a personal account for myself to see all these cool photos she was sending me. I am officially soooooo obsessed. 

Why? Because I usually just put my store mannequins in holiday attire and put a Holiday Collection sign out. But, all this time I was missing out on the awesome joys of window dressing. Not that I don't do any holiday decorating, it's just that I have never gone all out on my store window. Inside the shop I love to put up a tree and decorate and hang stockings and ornaments. This year I will be working on the window so stay tuned for our holiday window display that I make...I will have to post pictures. Now, the big step is deciding what I'm going to do with it. 

Those pictures have given me some good ideas though...I'm thinking lights and feathers and white. 

Until then, 

 I'm designer Dreaming.

Does anyone know who designed this?

So a few weeks ago I pulled this photo and wanted to save it to look at more from this designer. But, unfortunately I didn't save the info from it or the link. If anyone knows what designer this is please let me know, I'm interested in their work!

Until then, I'm designer dreaming <3 p="">

Styling Myself. For once.

 

What do I sew in? Sweatpants and a pull over fleece. What is my favorite day outfit at the office? Zip-up and jeans. How about when I'm at the front of the shop? V-neck, jeans, and a button down sweater. I manage to wear a variation of every single one of these outfits in about 35 different ways. I own about 20 V-Neck tees. I might own close to 30 pairs of jeans. And, probably more big zip-ups. And even though I love the ease of this kind of dressing, I can't help but notice my closet full of wonderful clothes that don't fit into this category. 

I am an avid shopper. I am also an avid designer and work on my line. Being a designer leaves me everyday working on dressing other people. I love it. I love making things for people to wear. I love putting people in my designs and finding ways to incorporate into their wardrobe. So why is it so hard for me to get my self styled every morning? 

My reasoning: I want to be comfortable and able to work my best. Oh that's valid on sewing days. But I should be working on styling my clothes better on all the other days. My other reasoning: I'm very busy from when I wake up until I go to bed working on my line, website, and everything in between. And taking the time to really style something for myself could be saved for a customer at the shop. 

Until I read an article on how to wear hard to style garments. Even though I'm not worried about hard to style clothing, just any at all, I read it. The article suggested that you take out seven hangers and hang up all the clothes you are trying to wear that week. Hang the entire outfit on one hanger, accessories included. And then it won't take up time each morning to find something to wear when you are tired. 

So I did that. I planned out just three outfits this week. But! I really love how it turned out. The first few pictures are what I picked out and put on the hanger earlier this week. Then the bottom picture is of me wearing it on a regular day at the shop instead of my normal work outfit. 

How does it feel? Amazing. I felt so put together. I know that when I style other people sometimes they are looking at me like why should I trust this girl in street clothes to pull together a beautiful dressy outfit. Until they see what I can do. But even though my style is very odd I still know how to dress other people. Showing off my different style is a good way to show people I can work with all styles.

My goal is to start working in all my different pieces each week. I'll let you know how it goes. No more go to everyday uniform just because I'm busy. I of course will always find a place for it. Put its place is between styled outfits.

Photography, a lesson in inspiration

I bought my first camera, half gifted to me, for the very reason of taking my own pictures for my website and look book. I realized quickly that I needed a studio and a load of other things that I did not have. So I hired a professional photographer with a studio to shoot our website. But, I also take a lot of the non-studio photos myself.

I felt as if the investment was paying off. I could do my own photography day to day if needed when the moment struck me and I wanted to show off what I was doing. It made blogging easier. It made getting new product previewed quicker. But then one day I was shooting photos of a new skirt with a friend of mine and looked down at my feet to spot something sprouting. I quickly bent over to see the pod like bud breaking through the new spring ground.

My model waiting patiently as I continued to photograph several other oddly shaped plants. And then I got back to the photo session.

It wasn’t until I was home pulling the photos of my computer that I realized I didn’t have anything to do with the photos of plants. I’m not a nature photographer. They really didn’t have a place to go. So, I left them on my desktop.

I stared at the bud in one of the pictures for weeks. It was so beautiful that I didn’t want to delete the photo, but still didn’t know what to do with it. Finally it came to me. The shape reminded me of a skirt blooming upside down from the fresh ground. So what did I do with it? I sketched it. I sketched it twice. Now there is a slew of sketches and a prototype of this skirt in our studio.

A few weeks after the first sketch I was exiting my house in the evening and realized I was in love with the blooming tree in my yard. So I ran in and took some pictures. Honestly, I took tons of pictures. So many that my neighbor asked me what I was photographing our tree for. I told her in home art work to hang up. Which, even though would have been a good idea, was not my initial intention. Like the first set of photos, I did not have a clue what to do with the photos I was taking. They weren’t going on my website or my blog. They were just going to sit on my desktop again.

This time I found the use for these in a few days. I was in the studio with a dress I wanted to make and couldn’t decide on the fabric. As I was scanning online I glimpsed at the photo again and immediately went to our fabric bolts. I knew I wanted to make the dress in the same colors as the photo I had taken.

And currently, that dress in charcoal and rose, is selling on our website. The question should not have been what should I do with these photos, but why the heck didn’t I think about it before. I find most of my inspiration from nature. Sometimes when inspired I am able to write it down. Other times I try to remember it until I write it down but never do. The camera is not just a convenience. It’s a tool for capturing my inspiration when it hits.

Yes, I still use it to mostly take pictures of my clothes for the business. But now you’ll find me every few days, pulled over on a back country road, stomping through the brush taking pictures of what inspires me. I can’t think of a better way to enjoy my camera. 

If you enjoy these photos and want to use them please provide proper credit to Rum and Couture with links. Thank you.