Thanks to Google Analytics and a sudden flurry of Pattern Workshop sales (yes, that happens even after negative publicity!), I recently realized that I've been the topic of some heated discussion in the sewing blogging community. Yes, GOMI, I'm talking to you. And yes, I know it's happened several times since I launched my course. My husband has physically removed the computer from my hands on multiple occasions in the past, but this time, I feel a response is warranted. Some people (personal friends and students in my course) have come to my defense, but I've never bothered with responding directly. Well, you got your wish. And here's my response.
My students have been called "suckers" for taking my course since I am not a classroom-trained patternmaker. Well, my student body includes Big-4 licensees, retired grandmothers who simply enjoy learning, stay-at-home moms burning the midnight oil to make extra money for their families, disabled pattern designers who can no longer draft on paper, young and resourceful entrepreneurs avoiding the rat race and retired veterans looking to create income streams. I have even had patternmaking professors take my course so they can share the knowledge with their students. There are no "suckers" in my course. Most of my students are smart and driven self starters with dreams of creating successful businesses - whether small or large.
Let's get one thing straight: I DO NOT TEACH PATTERNMAKING. At least, not in the traditional/academic sense. I have never claimed to be a professional patternmaker, and I don't intend to ever become one. My students are expected to either have a working knowledge of pattern drafting already or to be willing to learn on their own using suggested textbooks.
There's a reason why I sew with other people's patterns: I have more enjoyable/profitable/less time-consuming things to do than draft my own clothing patterns. Yes, I have patterns for sale, and yes, I might release more patterns in the future. But that's business. I create(d) patterns because 1) it helped my credibility when I initially released Pattern Workshop, 2) it's a fun diversion from other business activities and 3) it's an additional income stream which helps me provide for my family and support my fabric hoarding tendencies.
But as a side note - I do find it interesting that the same people who decry these amateur, not-professionally-trained designers also take every opportunity to bash Big 4 pattern companies. Are these companies not staffed by professionally trained designers with degrees and years of experience in patternmaking? Where exactly are all these expert patternmakers if not working for large and well-known pattern companies? Do they all work for ready-to-wear designers? Couture houses? Perhaps these brilliant designers know how to fit every curve of a woman's body, yet they don't sell patterns because they don't know how to create a marketable pattern. (But hey, I have got the course for them if they want to learn!)
Should a person not sew if they don't have a degree in garment construction? Do sewing bloggers have no business sharing their creations if they haven't sent designs down a runway? Is the self-taught sewist banned from teaching because she has no classroom training? It seems that the sewing blogging community fully supports a self-taught sewist/designer until she tries to (and succeeds at) monetizing her learned skills. The second a blogger starts making money doing something she's learned, this community develops a crab mentality toward her. I've seen it happen again and again.
But just like a pattern designer might take a course in small-business accounting (from someone who is inexperienced in patternmaking) or the history of costume making (from someone equally inexperienced in patternmaking), he/she takes my course to learn software. The beauty of my course (or so I've been told) is that I only teach the parts that are relevant to creating digital patterns. There's no need to spend years learning the myriad capabilities of Adobe programs when I can teach it in 29 lessons. And when I say "lessons," we're not talking about 2-minute videos. The course contains hours and hours of video instruction and worksheets that shave weeks and even months off each designer's lead time. "Lessons" is a subjective term that shouldn't be debated without a peek into my course material.
What I DO teach is Adobe Illustrator and InDesign for the purpose of creating sewing patterns. Yes, I am self-taught. No, I do not have a degree in patternmaking or graphic design. A comment was made recently that I must, "at most, have two years of experience using Illustrator." Well, no, not exactly. I have been using Illustrator since 2004...so, 11 years. As for InDesign, I started using Quark XPress (a similar and now defunct software) in high school and learned InDesign in 2004 or 2005. So again, 10+ years. I also teach fabric design for BurdaStyle, and no, I am not a fabric designer. I joke that I'm a "technician, not an artist." My goal is (and has always been) to give artists/designers the skills they need to get their ideas out of their heads and into the hands of those who can enjoy their creations (myself included).
There is a survey at the end of my course, and students are able to rate several aspects of it on a scale of 1-5. I have never gotten lower than a 3 on any measure, and those are VERY rare. Even the few 3 ratings I have received have been accompanied with glowing, thoughtfully written reviews about everything else in the course except for maybe one or two areas the student thought I could improve. It is usually the InDesign lessons which receive lower scores, and that is because I don't go into as much detail on it as I do on Illustrator.
As for refunds, I have given two since launching the course. One was for a woman who enrolled twice and forgot that she'd already purchased the course. The other was for a designer who emailed me around the time I had my son asking if the course was for her. She was hoping to draft patterns for manufacture, but I didn't respond in time to tell her that it probably wouldn't help her since most factories require a certain type of file that Illustrator doesn't provide. She kindly asked for a refund since I was slow in responding, and I was happy to provide it as she was starting up a business on a limited budget.
These same antagonists have accused me of single-handedly "ruining the PDF pattern business" with my course by flooding the market with poor-quality patterns. I wholeheartedly disagree. Those who are truly driven to create and sell PDF patterns will figure it out one way or the other. I have one student who previously digitized her patterns in PowerPoint. POWERPOINT, people. (THAT is determination.) And I have several others who traced their patterns with Sharpie markers and scanned them into PDFs. What I have done is given people who would be putting patterns out ANYWAY the tools to make them better.
In addition, anyone who understands the free market economy knows that the leaders in any industry will naturally rise to the top, and the companies who sell subpar products and provide bad customer service will fail. The same is true in the PDF sewing pattern business. If anything, I am dramatically increasing the selection of PDF patterns available to sewists by giving would-be designers the tools they need to stop dreaming and start selling. Word of mouth will prevent unskilled patternmakers from going far in our community.
So, I guess my bottom line for all the haters out there is this: I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake...shake it off, shake it off. And I'll do so while sewing a crappy pattern from one of my crappy students who took my crappy class. And we will all be over here looking fab in our handmade clothes made from fabric we purchased with our millions of dollars in profit we swindled from our sucker students and customers.
Because you know, we totally make millions.
