It would be cool to make those pants out of the original fabric I designed. So I decided to make an original fabric with st. caveman woven in.
I started to google the weavers. alibaba.com! even though we have these convenient tools, they never work without a correct keyword. I couldn't find anything I needed. At that time I was still working for a local couture designer's place and the designer had done tons of fancy Indian embroidery stuff. So I contacted the embroidery guy in India to ask for a help! and thank god...the embroidery guy replied me and told me what I needed would be a "hand loom". He didn't know any hand loom mills but still, knowing the correct keyword was a big step for the squirrel. I went back to alibaba.com and started looking for the hand loom mill and easily could get one!
However, man, there are so many hardships to get over once we decided to do something new and original.
The next hardship was a "minimum order".
The minimum order was 1000 meters. So I negotiated and reduced it to 250 meters....Still 250 meters of fabric are about enough for 125 pants. It is way too many pants for the tiny lil squirrel brand. But I really didn't wanna miss this chance....so what this squirrel did was to ask around people if there were someones who wanted to share the loom. Fortunately this squirrel has a lot of cool artist friends and she could get more responses than she expected!!...but still, while I was calculating the shipping cost and custom stuff, I started being scared because too much money flows. It was too risky and too complicated. And I didn't wanna involve my friends in this risky situation. Being too stubborn and sticking to our first ideas would provide nothing. Could be even dangelous...but still it was too quick to give it up. We don't really need to give it up as long as we prepare alternative plans... I remembered the hand loom person told me what I wanted to make might also work with embroidery...so I got back to the embroidery guy. It is more safer because the minimum order is less than hand loom...Thus my plan B started....
Meanwhile my illuminated manuscript was getting done...This is the one.
But this pattern was too complicated to be embroidered.
So I made a lil more simple version and sent the image to them.
This is the first sample they did.
How cute!!
St. caveman looks great in the embroidery!
Acorn bug looks even cuter in the embroidery!
My best favorite part is this. Hedgehog! She came out very profound. Looks like a dark star!! This reminded me of my favorite song which title is "dark star" by Grateful Dead. "Daaark star crusshing...♪"
They told me if the background has a texture like twill, it will get more "woven" look.
So the squirrel ran to the organic fabric whole sale place in my town.
This is their website if you are interested...they have tons of cool organic fabric in reasonable price. (10 yards minimum)
http://picknatural.com/
This is the one I got.
A beautiful hemp fabric with a beautiful texture and color.
The next step I had to do was finishing up the design of the pants I had been working on to send the patterns of those to the embroidery guys so they can mark on the fabric with my patterns for positioning where they should embroider.
I made two pants, and guess what? I even made a jacket, too! I was so excited these would be an awesome st. caveman suit!!
This is the sample. I always make a sample in cheap canvas fabric.
As you can see, the jacket looked a lil too heavy so I made it shorter but still I didn't wanna make it too short considering when people wear it with jeans. We the designers always gotta imagine various situations.
Also made the pants a lil narrower and made the shape like a streamline shape to avoid to get a wasted part of the fabric. The fabric is 60" width and when we cut pattern pieces out, we have to layout the pattern pieces effectively within the 60" width to keep it low cost. This is a very professional detail so it would be a lil hard to understand for you guys but this pants were too wide and that could be the cause of providing a lot of wasted space on fabric. So I had to reduce the pants width but still needed the pants to look super duper wide...reduced it lil by lil, and stopped at the point I think this is the most I could reduce to keep it look super wide!!
you know, fashion designers always struggle in between their budgets and design ideas. We gotta work effectively in those restrictions. Being a fashion designer is like this. Not fabulous as you guys think.....
And at this moment, I didnt know the next step would be more pain in the ass!
oops, it is time to get back to work....I will tell you the rest of the story tomorrow nite!
"Can the squirrel get over the hardships and get this projcet done?!"
Wait until tomorrow!
-squirrel
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