The Art of Failing

I've always admired my mother's ability to apply watercolor paint to a blank canvas so freely and openly.  Her beautiful brushstrokes create dream-like scenes of forests, flowers, exotic animals and seascapes. 

I tried to paint a lily when I was about 10, and was unsuccessful.  I believe this is because I tried to control every aspect, every color, every runny water mark.  I design the same way.  My personal favorite garment I've made is extremely technical, and won two awards - one surface design award for the use of laser cutting, and the other was an overall technical award for my couture collection senior year of college. 

 Now that I'm out of college and work full time to sustain living in Los Angeles, draping, pattern-making and sewing are squeezed into a schedule with a 50 hour work week, a social life, and any other useless time sucks.  Sometimes when I get home all I want to do is eat and watch some show on Hulu, but then I remember my ultimate goal and how bad I want it.  I work on patterns for a dress for a couple weeks in between working and living, make sure they are perfect, cut out a mock-up, put it on the dress form...only to be disappointed that it's not what I envisioned.  You see, when I'm at work and we need a pattern it's a matter of an hour or so that the pattern maker has the pattern completed, it's put up to be cut, and we are looking at the sample by the end of the day.  It's not that easy when it comes to doing everything yourself. 

 So now I have this semi-complete mock-up of a dress that I know I don't want to spend any more time on, and am starting to accept that not everything I start is going to come out perfectly, but in some way still helps me get a step closer to my goal, and maybe one day I'll have a pattern maker who can whip out patterns for me.  Until then I'll try and learn from my mother and take it one brushstroke at a time.