Against My Grain

In my many years on this planet, my friends, colleagues, family and husband have said some nice things about my skills, talents and even my personality.  But I have seldom infrequently ok, probably never been complimented on how methodical I am.  In my younger years I reveled in being "enthusiastic and spontaneous."  Now I recognize the downside of those same traits...."undisciplined and distracted."  I can get the job done but it isn't always pretty watching it happen.  This might explain why I own numerous Craftsy classes but have only once watched one of them all the way through.  But like an overstocked "resource center," having too many unused Craftsy classes can be too much of a good thing.  So let's see if any of you Craftsy fans can tell which class I am committing to working my way through in the next month:

Craftsy class preparation

Yes, you're right, it's the Jean-ius class taught by Kenneth King.  I'm  liking him a lot as an instructor.  There are many steps, far more than any other RTW copying technique I've seen, and he explains his reasons for taking each one.  I'm one of those annoying students who wants to understand the why of each direction you give.  That childishly rebellious streak in me balks at "just do it this way."  I've almost made my peace with the fact that this class still may not produce a pair of miracle jeans.....the ones that make me look 20 lbs thinner and 20 years younger.  When I saw the finished gallery of projects, I was terribly impressed with a number of the results achieved by sewists all over the world.  Yes, I could just start with a Burda jeans pattern and work from a mock up and yes, I was impressed by the free jeans webinar info from Peggy Sagers of Silhouette Patterns Peggy's Webinars and her pattern might even work but once more, let's use it or lose it.  I'm going to take this Craftsy class slowly with some simple TNT sewing in between for a break.  What made me consider making jeans is that so many retailers I used to buy from either have folded or no longer carry long length as an option.  I don't actually need blue denim jeans, I can still buy those in RTW but I love jeans in different colors and fabrics and am willing to give this method a shot. Maybe it won't work in the end but at least I will have practiced some slow sewing and that might have some good benefits for my mind as well as my closet.  I'll keep you informed as I progress.
In a slightly related note, on Friday Mr. Lucky and I had a tour with a friend of the Discovery Channel's Creative and Technical Center.  It was another one of those fun activities from our church auction.  We got to see where they do the sound editing for the many, many shows produced by Discovery.  In one of them, the fellow working on a promo for a show with loud zooming cars described his job as a cross between technology (as he demonstrated the sound library with 20 sounds from a 1975 Cobra) and art because he was the one making the choices about what cuts to use, for how long and when, all in a 15 second promo.  Made me think about the best seamstresses I see on blogs and in life....those who have beautiful choices of fabric and pattern and the finesse and skill to execute the construction so wonderously.