Told my mentor I hated working with pleats and she made me do 50 of them in one sitting

I was at a workshop in Portland last spring and this older designer named Elaine pulled me aside. I was complaining about how pleats never lay right for me and she just said 'you don't hate pleats, you hate not knowing how to handle them.' So she handed me a scrap of cotton and made me pin, press, and stitch the same box pleat 50 times in a row. Took me like 3 hours. By the end I actually got the hang of it and now I use them all the time. Has anyone else had someone call them out like that and it actually helped?

3 comments

3 Comments

jamie77023d ago

Wait, 50 pleats in one sitting? That's brutal. I would have walked out crying after the first 10. Elaine sounds like a tough teacher but she clearly knew what she was doing. I had a pattern cutting instructor who made me re-draft a sleeve cap 12 times before he'd even look at it. Thought I was going to lose my mind. But yeah, now I can spot a bad sleeve cap from across the room. Funny how that works.

the_richard23d ago

Maybe the struggle is what makes it stick though.

julia_anderson23d agoTop Commenter

Wait were you always that guy who could nail a sleeve cap first try? I used to think that kind of drilling was just old school stubbornness. Figured there had to be a better way to learn than pure repetition. But honestly seeing how fast I can now spot a wonky pleat or a loose stitch? Yeah that changed my mind. It's like your hands just know after a while. The muscle memory kicks in and you stop second guessing yourself. Elaine was right even if I hated her in the moment.