I have a passion for fashion, sewing, knitting, and fitting, which has led me on an endless journey of learning. This blog chronicles my personal journey, comprising both triumphs and setbacks and the invaluable lessons I’ve gleaned along the way. Should you come across a post written months or even years ago, please bear in mind that it merely captures the collective wisdom and comprehension I possessed at that particular juncture. Would I recommend everything I’ve done in the past, such as using a duct tape sloper or trying a “wide hip vs. knock knee alteration”? No, but I believe that it’s important to keep these posts up because they still offer something to learn from. Instead, this blog aims to provide content for other curious minds and to encourage everyone to try new things!
But if you can draw it? If you can successfully demonstrate your idea in a way where both of you have the same understanding of it, so that either of you could build it or use it? That is a worthy goal. In my experience, the ability to take an idea from your own mind and transfer it to the mind of another person is intoxicating. It is a kind of creative empowerment that makes all your other crazy ideas feel maybe not so crazy. And the fact that you only need a pencil and a piece of paper to make it happen, that is most empowering of all.
Adam Savage, “Every Tool’s a Hammer: Life Is What You Make It.”
Despite the fact that I haven’t, until quite recently, felt particularly skilled at it, I’ve been drawing most all my life. I draw every single day, for a multitude of reasons. I use drawing to flesh out and perfect my ideas. I use it to communicate with other builders and colleagues. I use it to create momentum. I use it to capture knowledge developed over the course of a project. And, of course, I use it for ideation.
From a planning perspective -whether it’s for current or future projects-I look at drawing as a translation tool from my brain to the physical world, where I have frequently found words wanting in the explanation of complex objects and operations, which, of course, is the entire purpose of every plan ever made. What is a plan if it isn’t helping you understand what you’re building and how you’re supposed to build it?
Today, the maker space is not lacking in planning tools. There are software and mobile apps and various mechanical apparatus, and they all work the way they’re designed, but none of them seem to do what a simple pencil and piece of paper can. Because unlike those other methods, drawing out your idea shares the physical, tactile character of the building and making it is meant to precede and facilitate. Drawing is your brain transferring your idea, your knowledge, your intentions, from the electrical storm cloud at its center, through synapses and nerve endings, through the pencil in your hand, through your fingers, until it is captured in the permanence of the page, in physical space. It is, I have come to appreciate, a fundamental act of creation.
Sharing the details of a project and how I arrived at the final item is about giving permanence to the ideas, appreciation, and empowerment to this process of making. My move away from social media, where the only things that matter are curated feeds and perfect final projects, has been very therapeutic because it has allowed me space to be the type of maker I want to be: one who shares ideas and concepts, imparts knowledge to others, embarks on new ventures, and, above all, approaches my craft with mindfulness and intention. Thank you for following along with me on this journey of study and exploration.
HandmadePhD 