The following tags are in response to a dress I made recently, which was my first serious sewing project.
I know these were left as a compliment and I don’t mean to single anyone out, but I want to talk about this for a minute.
What you might be imagining when you see a post like this is that I woke up one day and decided to make this costume, and then I just made it perfectly on the first try, no problem. What you are not seeing is:
me having to look up youtube tutorials for every single thing. “How to make a ruffle” “how to sew a zipper” “what is bias tape” “why won’t this fusible interfacing work” “how to make a bustle” “how to lace a corset”
sewing a jacket into a mobius strip that can’t be turned inside-out
spending five hours troubleshooting a sewing machine to discover I inserted the bobbin the wrong way
having to go back to the fabric store a dozen times because I kept buying the wrong fabric/interfacing/tool/tape/lace
sewing machine eating my fabric again and I don’t know why
begging the fabric store ladies to help me interpret instructions on a pattern because I don’t know how to decode it
redoing the corset five times because I couldn’t get it right
a mountain of failed mockups and pattern pieces
renting a car to drive to a friend’s house for emergency sewing instruction
wasted material
about 100 hours of work over several months
crying while sewing at 4 am
angst
Chalking up a success to natural talent is a harmful idea and unfair for everyone. It dismisses the hard work that went into an achievement, and it makes you believe that you can’t accomplish that same thing unless you were magically born with some special skill. Guess what: nobody is born knowing how to sew or draw or sing or write give a speech or compose an opera. Natural talent does not exist. There is only hard work, practice, and learning. Slam dunk the concept of talent into a volcano, where it belongs.
THIS +1000000.
I apologize for probably missing the point, but I think we’re going to agree to disagree here. I write custom software for the panels I do at conventions. Half the time it is nothing but troubleshooting. I have logged probably dozens of hours finishing up a program for a con while on the con floor. (The last show I was at, I probably logged a good 4-5 hours of coding onsite the day of the panel, not to mention all the coding I did the night before and only getting about 5 hours’ sleep in the process)
You clearly have some skill for costume-making, and you have the ability to problem solve and learn new techniques. Your level of expertise allows you to produce viable product when it is called upon. I think that qualifies as talent. I’ve actually seen the process of making a costume from the first trip to JoAnn’s to her wearing it on the floor of a convention, and all the tribulations in between. I think that person had talent.
Yes, people may equate talent to the ability to pull something out of one’s ass that’s flawless and problem-free, but they’re only half wrong. How many of the 7 Billion people on this Earth can do what you do? Have the same resourcefulness that you do? Have the same level of perseverance? If no talent were involved, literally everyone would be making their own store-quality clothes.
tl;dr It’s okay to tone down some of the hyperbole but don’t sell yourself short in the process
lookashiny 