Hello, everybody!

(Me, staring off into the distance, trying to look cool.)

My name is Tessa, and I am (obviously) taking a class at FIT this summer. (AKA now.) I’m taking HMW 157: Introduction to Menswear Sewing.

I don’t really feel as if I thoroughly have to introduce myself, because I’ve actually done this (blogging for FIT) before! Over the spring semester, you could have read about my experiences in FIT’s HAP 026: Sewing for Fashion Designers class.  The Tessa there is the same one as the Tessa here! Feel free to go back and read some of my other stuff, including my original introduction (if you’re dying to know something about me).

Carrying on…

Since, as of this writing, it has been a week (!) since my first class, this entry is not going to be a play-by-play. It’ll be more general.

Let me start with the first day of class. I planned to take the train in, right? There I was, at my local train station, praying that the 12:26 train going to Grand Central would be on time. It wasn’t. So after the ten-minute mark, I decided to get my mom to drive me in. She did (thankfully!) and I actually made it to class on time.

(To those of you who are currently staring at their computer screens wondering why in the world I did not try to get on an earlier train, I have an answer for you. In the mornings, I’ve been working at a job which ends at noon. The 12:26 is the first afternoon train, so therefore it was the first one I could catch.)

Let me stay on track, though…

Being that this was the first class, it was pretty much introductions and a look over the supplies list and syllabus.  The main goal of this course is actually just the construction of one garment, unlike the multiple in the class I took prior. Since the class is a menswear sewing class, we’re to make a short-sleeved man’s dress shirt.

Personally, I am excited to do so. From my understanding of it, menswear is very detail-centric, and I believe that I have to work on such.

Then, on my way back home, to get to Grand Central, I (gasp!) took the subway by myself home. It was like only the second or so time I had actually taken the subway, and then I did it by myself! I was quite proud of myself, as I even had to transfer!

Now onto the next day. My train was on time, we played with the machines a bit, and I think that was pretty much it. For many, using the industrial machines was new, but to me such was not. As previously mentioned, I took a sewing  class during the spring semester. So I was breezing through the practice exercises, just having to refresh my memory rather than get used to a whole entire new system.

(Industrial and home sewing machines are like Macs and PCs- they do the same thing, yet are still different.)

The rest of the week went by quickly. (Not to say that those first few days didn’t, but…) We basically just prepped and prepped for our shirts.

There were cutting out of patterns, trips to TruMart for fabrics and Sil for thread, there were less-than-a-minute missings of my regular train home, there was cutting out fabric, and so on and so forth.

(My fabric. Fishes!!!!)

Now’s the time to talk about today’s class- the second Monday. We actually sewed on fabric today, for the first time in the class. The yoke’s attachment to the shirt was started, which was actually quite easy, being that so far we’ve done only two straight stitches.

Also, the interfacing for the shirt was cut and attached.  For me, this ironing to attach it took ages. (Oops, whatever.)

I was able to get through everything, though I believe that not all kids were able to do so.

I am pretty excited for the next couple of days, and am totally looking forward to the next part of the shirt assembly.

Until next time-

Tessa