Kathleen started production patternmaking in 1981. Starting in 1993, she began providing consulting and engineering services to manufacturers, small companies, and startups with an emphasis on developing owner-operator domestic cut-and-sew operations. In 2015 she opened a 5,000 sqft. fully equipped sewing factory: The Sewing Factory School. Kathleen is the author of The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Sewn Product Manufacturing, the most highly rated book of any topic in the garment industry. She's been mentioned numerous times in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, National Public Radio, Boston Globe, LA Times, Vogue, French Vogue and has at least 15 Project Runway alums at last count. Kathleen writes nearly all of the articles on Fashion-Incubator.com and hosts its forum, the largest private online community for apparel manufacturers on the web.
My review is only a month behind schedule! This was an outstanding show for us, the best ever. We were able to locate and purchase several items on our list that ranged from significant to trifling (but annoying). For whatever reason, this last show seemed to be a radical departure from previous shows in that vendors were actively thinking of ways they could help us -even if that meant sending us to a competitor.…
Better late than never, here is a discussion of the features that we designed into the child’s coat we produced at last Fall’s apparel manufacturing boot camp that was hosted by the Albuquerque Fashion Incubator and my sewing factory. If you’re new to these parts, we cut and sewed 120 coats in 4 days -all with volunteer labor.…
You can breathe new life into older machines with just a few upgrades. Here’s a breakdown on the recent remodeling job I did on my Singer 107 W12. She was made in 1932 -84 years ago! She still runs like a top.…
Yesterday, we did a training on shade marking, marking and bundling for our Spring Boot Camp training event (we still have a few openings) so this is a perfect time to discuss shade marking in more depth. I’d initially broached the subject 11 years ago in a post referring to bundling and bagging so this is a perfect follow up.…
Wednesdays, the factory is quiet. I’m the only one here so I can do what I want which often means obsessively checking on my feral cat population. The grey fluffy one is missing again and I try not to let it upset me.…
