Latch Hook Rug Update

 Long time no see! I generally am posting over on my Instagram, ManicPop nowadays, but please be advised that my Etsy account under ManicPop has been compromised and Etsy will not let me recover it. 

That being said, had some thoughts on Sunday about how I came to be a fashion-girl -- making, sewing, designing and sketching. I don't have a blog really otherwise, so this seemed like a good spot to post it. Enjoy! 

It's taken me decades to figure out where my interest in fashion suddenly “sprung up”. But it wasn't sudden at all. It's always been running in the background, so quietly I somehow never took note.

Drinking my coffee this morning, I opted to pull out a book from my orange bookcase instead of starting at the insanity on my phone that is the internet these days. Yesterday I was away from it for most of the day and was really enjoying being a little more present in my own life.

I have recently re-acquired a book called “Barbie: Her Life and Times” by BillyBoy that I owned as a child. Judging by my note inside the book “started, 12/28/96” you could guess that I was reading it mostly in the late 90s. I noted my age on the piece of paper “10 1/2”. Flipping through that book was a far more enjoyable use of my time than scrolling random apps during breakfast.

I marveled at the “Barbie Goes Mod” pages with all the bright color prints and pattern on the clothing as well as colorblock dresses and asymmetrical shapes and Vidal Sassoon hairstyles on some of the dolls. By the time I got to the Italian designers portion of the book, the bold knitwear struck me and immediately had ideas of re-creating the zigzag, block style sweater for myself. Another pipeline my fashion journey has been taking me down: knitting.

I just always assumed all girls in the late 80s, early 90s loved fashion, dolls, and other fashion-related toys. It was a very big portion of the consumer market back then and the 80s were known as a very fashionable time.

But I still recall one Easter, my aunt bought me a really cute matching clothing set when I was maybe 7 or younger and myself remarking to my family “I will never like clothes! Clothes are boring!” How wrong I was.

I don't know who bought me the Crayola fashion sketching set that I carried everywhere with me then. Maybe that same aunt, it's hard to say. The kit came with a stencil outline of three fashion figures and pages of clothing that you could then trace onto the paper over your figure. It featured “backgrounds” that you could put your sketch into like the park or a ballroom with draped, fancy curtains. How about on-stage with big bulb lighting in the background?

I generally opted to not use the backgrounds OR even the pages of fashion provided in the kit. I knew what I liked, and I would just sketch that up instead. I assumed I was playing with the toy “wrong” but I liked my style choices far better. I spent hours drawing, coloring, and saving all my sketches in a little folder.

Even earlier than that toy though, many of us had Fashion Plates. I remember carting mine to kindergarten and leaving it out on my desk one day. While away, some dumb boy had come back and taken the crayon to the plate itself, wondering why it “wasn't working”. I can't even tell you how furious I was as that was one of my favorite toys. I still have all of my early 90s Fashion Plate sets and the crayon is visible to this day.

By middle school, my main fashion interest had shifted to hemp jewelry, which also was very of-the-moment. I can remember buying kits at the craft store where they bagged up all the items you would need to make a necklace – the hemp itself, the beads, and then you would just follow the instructions. I sat for many hours outside in the sun working on these and am still not sure how I figured it out on my own.

I do recall one day asking my mom to make me something also around that time period. My mom had an old Kenmore sewing machine with a yellowed case that mostly sat unused, but I knew she knew how to use it. I had ideas for things, or desires for items I really couldn't find in the stores. During that time, we spent a lot of our hours at the mall or at the craft stores to begin with. I succinctly remember the fabric section in an old dimly-lit but yellow-tinted lighting Joann Fabrics and running my hands along all of the fabric bolts. Couldn't I just pick a pattern and have my mom sew me something? Or teach me?

I finally convinced her one day, making something at least. I picked out a black mostly-woven fabric with primary color flecks – like a tweed fleece with some stretch. The flecks were red, yellow, blue, and green, a combo I still love. I can't remember if we bought a pattern then, or if we decided to use something my mom already had. But it was to become a long sleeve simple sweater-like top.

I don't actually recall my mom cutting out the fabric, but I do remember her being extra-frustrated at sewing the sleeves. I wanted to help, but she told me I was better off “helping by staying out of the way”. Fair enough, I guess. Soon enough, I would have a custom-made garment! As she struggled with the machine, she said to me “Nicole, if you don't wear this, you are going to EAT IT!” I assumed sewing something was hard, so maybe that's why she didn't want help.

By the time it was done, I remember the underarms feeling too tight. I would guess now, it was either the wrong size or wrong fabric choice. Maybe a little of both. The design was otherwise something I liked, but the fabric also seemed a little too minimal stretch for said garment. I would never bring this up though because my mom went through so much trouble making it. I wore it a few times to appease her, and then it ended up in the back of my closet.

Funnily enough, to this day I have at least two things that are similar to that black fabric with color flecks – a scarf, bought from a retail store I used to run, and then a shawl neck cardigan with big buttons and a tie belt, bought at some random store like CJ Price during their “going out of business” sale in Chicago's Portage Park neighborhood in my post-college years.

Over the years, I have always remembered fashion-related moments of my life. I can recall my first communion dress in third grade and picking it out at some discount store with my grandma and mom. I loved the multi-tiered fine pleated skirt but photos of me in it were lost to time until a few months ago.

Imagine my surprise, while flipping through a “scrapbook” I had been creating in my elementary years of myself, in that same dress I had described to my husband many times, and my memory was accurate. I excitedly showed him, though I wish I had more photos.

By high school, I honestly thought I was going to go down a more “music” pathway, despite not being in any music programs. Those were too “academic” for me. No, I wanted to join someone's garage band and play music THAT way. I made a few failed attempts – one time posting a flyer around the school and leaving my phone number for someone to call me. I actually got one phone call! It was a guy who ended up being in well-known local bands in the area, but I didn't make the cut for some reason.

In the mid to later years of high school, fashion became both my mask and my outlet, though I never tried sewing quickly after that ill-fated sweater-top my mom tried to make me. Too hard. Anyway, being a transplant from the New York metro area, the kids at school already thought I was a little weird, though I can't recall being full-on bullied.

You could be anyone you wanted to with fashion, and no one could stop you. By the early 2000s, me and my mom and sister were spending WAY too much time at the newly-opened mall in our area, no doubt racking up credit card debt. As a kid, I had no idea what was normal or not. I didn't even have a favorite store back then, aside from maybe TJ Maxx because you would get a random hodge-podge of items that people generally were not interested in back then, especially where we lived. I pulled out a short sleeve turtle neck top that had a soft rib knit quality to it, but also had peacock feathers attached to the shoulders. I walked around school like that. I figured, I couldn't make these kids think I was any weirder, so I rolled with it.

I spent a lot of time actually using fabric paint on clothes. I saw a photo of jeans in a teen magazine that were hastily painted up with copper fabric paint and decided I wanted to recreate said look. So the next time we went to the craft store, I picked up my copper paint.

By the time I started to drive, I would stop at a thrift store attached to our local K-Mart (much to the dismay of my mom) and would buy cheap items to cut up or glue sequins onto and make my own “styles”. I recall a dark purple tennis skirt I did that with. But really, there were so many things! I ended up getting the courage one day to finally use my mom's machine for a Halloween costume project my boyfriend wanted to do – Ash from Pokemon – and I chopped up more thrift store items and glued the small necessary details with fabric glue instead of fussing with it.

He was thrilled. It looked so good! Then my sister asked me to help out with a Spike costume from Cowboy Bebop. I didn't watch any of the anime shows or read the comics, but I could definitely look at photos and approximate what an outfit should look like from that.

Eventually, it was time to decide on a college major my junior year and I had three main choices that stood out for me: Psychology because I was really loving that class in high school and all the inner workings of people and why they did what they did. Journalism, because I always loved writing and was in the middle of writing out every day in high school with dialogue and everything in 3-subject notebooks. I had even been a part of writing clubs in high school and was already writing some album reviews on a local radio station website. To be honest, this seemed like the option I was going to choose. And then..... fashion design. I felt like that choice was completely out of left field. I couldn't sew really – I had only played with a machine once or twice. I had NO idea how to follow a sewing pattern or create one, much less assemble a garment from scratch. I wasn't much of fashion sketcher anymore, even though I know I knew how from when I was a kid.

I remember sitting on my bed, ripping up 3 little strips of paper and writing each major out, folding it up, and putting it into one of the few hats I actually had. Probably that black pleather cabbie hat we all somehow had in the early 00s. I shook it and let it decide my fate. I closed my eyes, and pulled one out. “Fashion design”. It read. No, I can't let ONE pull decide the fate of my life! I reasoned. Two out of three, how about that? Fashion design again.

The third time, also fashion design. Fine, I guess. Fashion design it was!

Eventually I enrolled in a sewing class senior year at a local sewing center, deciding we had better not let me be completely clueless when I got to college if I really was going to be a design major. It went really well – much better than if my mom had taught me. The older ladies were so pleasant and helpful and it was a great environment for me personally. By our third garment, I decided to use a vintage pattern my mom had with two different ponte knits: one black yardage and one houndstooth yardage in black and white. When I finished it, the ladies in the sewing class who were teaching had asked me where I bought said top. I held up some fabric scraps to them and said “This is the one I have been working on!” So I guess I picked up sewing in a reasonably quick manner. Patternmaking in college was another story and there was a major struggle though I eventually figured it all out. In college, I also picked up knitting really fast in 2007, but I knew my sewing and pattern skills were more important so I focused on that more.

To say that fashion has saved me time and time again is no exaggeration. Through spending hours learning how to do things, it has helped my mental health. Though some days I had wondered how “worth it” it was when I launched complicated projects across the room in frustration. They were my own designs, so there were minimal instructions I could reference and sewing how-tos on YouTube were barely a thing yet. Late nights in the sewing room after working retail all day kept me motivated and inspired when the world was falling apart around me. Fabric was cheap and I had plenty of brown paper, snatched up from the local Home Depot, to draft out sewing patterns and make mistakes.

During COVID times, I delighted in using my iPad to draw random shapes, then throwing the elements into Photoshop and creating prints primarily for print-on-demand. Yet again, the world was falling apart but I was in my sewing room, working on more designs. My husband and I bought “samples” from various platforms and he would get asked where he got said zip up, etc all the time. “My wife designed it!” he would excitedly say. The graphics were the only thing I had designed, but I think that still counts for something.

Even though all these things came quite naturally to me and I had a long-running history with fashion in the background of my life, I always felt like a fraud somehow. It felt like I needed to have more money to create “real” fashion. I wasn't “really a designer” because I hadn't been successful in either working in the industry or sustaining my own shop – not even an Etsy one. I had a “brand” going but I didn't have nearly any sales, just blog posts. I tried to work on PDF patterns to create and sell, but with full time work, that proved far too time-consuming.

So gradually, I just became a maker and somehow, that was where I have been most satisfied. It's so fun to buy a vintage yardage of fabric and then scour the internet for a free pattern and within hours, you have something completely unique of your own. It's entertaining to find something on Pinterest that costs $350 and realize you have perfect sweatshirt fleece leftover to use and “knock off” said garment.

Fashion allows you to dream about something else. For me, it's always been about doing something nice for myself in a demanding world of “make sure everyone else is happy”. Right now, I spend hours relaxing and knitting. In school, I designed something myself for knitting class. While I don't doubt in years to come, I may also make up my own patterns, for now I am happy with following others and slowly picking up techniques there. A self-knitted mohair garment that took my hands three months to make and understand feels like one of the most luxurious things somehow. As someone who has never had a lot of money as an adult, this type of thing feels decadent and indulgent. And as I am approaching 40, why not for once? The yarn itself only cost $40, so it was very practical anyway.

Finally, it all makes sense how I've gone down this path the last 20+ years. It was engrained in me from childhood toys that I loved the most. The book I opened this morning somehow tied it all together after so many years. I loved flipping through it and looking at all the designs as a kid. So many parts of it informed much of what I like to this day – mod fashion, bright color prints, and bold knitwear. Then the practice of making garments and prints, saved me time and time again in regards to my own mental health. It gave me something to work toward, then marvel at, then wear out and about to display my “art”.

To anyone who is trying to convince you that anything such as this is just being “frivolous” and “consumerist”, it's not. So many of us were born to create and learn, and figure things out that we weren't sure we would ever be able to. It's been so much fun surprising myself over and over with what I actually can make come to life. If I have one recommendation for the newer makers out there: Do it the hard way. Learn the more traditional techniques and don't take so many shortcuts. Quality takes time and knowledge.

Lately, it's been knitting that is occupying my time. Back in 2023, I pined for some of the really fun hand-knitted contemporary sweaters that were becoming popular. I figured, eh, I have knitted before but do I really want to pick that up again? Do I really want to go that in-depth with it and buy more tools and supplies?

Yes, I did.

And these types of things will be the things you somehow fall back on when life gets weird. I think for many of us, this is why we create. I love building things, especially clothing. It somehow all makes sense how I have had a lifetime of doing this thus far – I never was the fraud I somehow believed I was. It was something I was quite honestly probably destined to be doing, whether or not I ever made money from it.