Darts - Thrown not Sewn

How is it October?!  I worked hard Thursday night on my short puff sleeve variation for Pattern class.  It didn't go well.  My design ideas were not easily translated after only learning the basics in class.  I feel like the teacher puts a lot of pressure on us to be creative and design what we are envisioning, but she doesn't offer much direction after her lesson on the simple steps to manipulate a sleeve sloper into a bell, puff, shirt waist, leg-o-mutton, etc.  (Yes, leg-o-mutton is the technical term for one sleeve style, ha!  It usually refers to a leg of lamb, as in a hunk of meat.).

Learning puff sleeve variations

I had a design in mind that would have been a lantern sleeve on the bottom, and would have had pleats at the top that showed a peek through fabric when the sleeve puffed out.  I couldn't figure out how to accomplish that and it was getting late so I tried a basic lantern.  I had questions on that and got stuck, so finally I caved and made a boring petal sleeve.  Yes it looked fine, but it is so very girly and not me.  However, it worked perfectly for the style of our princess seam dress in Struct. Draping, so I was able to crossover and use it there.  Lesson learned: buy a pattern making reference book.  It wasn't required for class, but I obviously need it to fill in gaps in my notes!

My half pants got an A from Prof. Renzulli.  Yeah!  We started draping the princess seam dress but due to the missed Mondays, we are behind schedule so that project will be set aside to finish later.

Friday night!  Angela and I went out for sushi in the East Village.  We had a really great time and it was a mini celebration because she applied for the art concentration for second semester and she had just completed her application to hand in that day.  A glass of plum wine and good conversation about potential design ideas... it felt like life instead of school!

Angela dragged me to The Creperie after our meal (yeah right!!).  It's a hole in the wall tiny place that serves out of this world savory and sweet crepes.  I had the Nutella, banana, strawberry and whipped cream variety.  Whoa.

Half of the crepe packaged for leftovers.  Yes it was huge.

We thought about stopping somewhere to play pool, but didn't see any bars like that so we headed for home.  On the way to the station, surprise!  The perfect Irish type pub with a pool table and laid back patrons.  I told Angela she's like my lucky charm because we seem to run into so many great finds when we are out.

The pool table was tiny so we opted for darts instead.  We played one game and then got challenged by a couple of guys.  It was funny because we sort of made up rules since we weren't entirely sure on how to play Cricket.  The guys took a while to catch on but that's not why they lost.  We were superior dart throwers, hands down.  Angela's ability to nail the bullseye and my combination of luck and decent aim, meant we kicked butt.  No betting occurred so the guys joked that we really lost because we could have had a free shot out of the deal.  But, we didn't want to buy in case we lost (us being poor students and all).

 

Bullseye

I enjoyed talking to one of the guys who gave me an outsiders perspective on FIT.  He thought it strange that there is a SUNY state school in Manhattan.  He also laughed when we mentioned how intense our program is.  He didn't believe us until we described more in detail the pace and how much information we cover.  When the conversation turned to our previous college degrees and then our age, he pulled the ol' side step to escape.  Guys are so funny like that - heaven forbid they have a great conversation with someone that's outside of their dating pool.  Thank goodness I'm not looking so I don't care about rejection from 24 year old boys in the bar.  :)