And so it begins...

I haven't sewn in three weeks, so my cutting table was buried under fabric, patterns and miscelleanous life stuff!

And this is how it looks now....cleaned and waiting for me to get started! I have ideas...boy do I have ideas...I mean loads of ideas! *LOL* I just have to figure out which one I should start with...'cause all of them want to come out and play!

However, the items that beat their way to the forefront of my mind...generally get mentally sewn up sometime during my busy day...either on the bus ride to work or from work...while I'm in a particularly boring meeting (who knew that Executive Assts would attend so many meetings!) or sometimes even while I'm sleeping! I've learned to keep a pad by the bed so that when I wake up and realize that I have solved a problem in my sleep, I can immediately write down the solution!

I love mental sewing...when I walk through the construction process, work out fit challenges or design changes and mentally catalogue what fabric and notions I have on hand and which things need to be purchased. All of my really great ideas are mentally sewn and carefully walked through long before I touch the fabric.

And then I make a roadmap for the garment...pictured above is how I plot out a garment. This particular photo was done in my sewing notebook but I also have a sketch book that I use for this purpose. Swatches, a really poor drawing, lots of notes on construction and sometimes even a list of things to be purchased are included in the roadmap. I refer to this constantly when making the garment...that way I don't forget any of the ideas or thoughts I had when I mentally sewed the garment.

So today on the next to last day of 2007, I will begin working on my first project for 2008! Stay tuned...there is more to come!