Days 7 & 8

Yesterday and today were similar. Ashley and I started clearing out some binders and drawers full of old fabric samples and trims - dating back to 98! There are more coming all the time so it was time to make some room. We were clearing out anything from before 2009. We both like to organize so this was fun for us. We would work on it for a bit, then usually someone would be doing something else that we could watch for a little, then we'd go back. This week and next week are crazy because everyone is rushing to get the catalog finished and printed. Sara is in meeting after meeting!! Yesterday afternoon, we helped Kristy swatch for randoms. These are printed photographs of each outfit/models, just on a white background with the style number and we have to cut swatches of each fabric, for each costume and tape it next to it so the graphic designers know how to color correct the photos. There are also notes written on here such as "lengthen short leg to match other", etc. Sometimes it's really easy to swatch randoms because there is a book for each section (ie: Jazz) with the design sketch and swatches that you can cut from but sometimes a certain fabric isn't there. In that case, we had to go into the warehouse, find the costume, then find the fabric and then swatch it.

Thursday morning, Sara brought out all of the Alpha Factor/Aerials catalogs going back to about 1993 so that Ashley and I could look through them and see how the styles had changed and evolved over the years. We will be working on a gymnastics design project pretty soon so she wanted to give us some ideas. After we looked through the catalogs, we went upstairs and talked to Wendy Martin who heads up the gymnastics section. While not a designer, she has a lot of input in what ends up in the Alpha Factor catalog because she knows gymnastics. She is hysterically funny and can talk for hours - we probably talked to her for 45 minutes or more. She went over two entire catalogs with us, telling us what sells, what doesn't and why.

After we talked to Wendy, we spent more time cleaning out. It was neat to see all of the fabrics/trims that Perform Group had used in the past 10 years. Sara said we could keep anything we wanted of the trims/applique samples, since we were just trashing it, so both Ashley and I scored some goodies :) Take a look at my free stuff below.