Helpless Customers are Helpless.

[AccountingDrone]

Exactly, and you know what you're doing, with lots of experience. Newbies really don't comprehend how much time and effort goes into sewing a costume or any clothing. .

I could crank out one of those single piece but looks like all the right layers [what I would call a halloween or stage costume] in a day on the cheap out of cheap cotton and synthetic 'silk' brocades and velvets, and sew on machine trim in probably a day [eh, call it a solid 12 hours] like this:



but I hate putting out shit like that. [And I would be willing to bet that it is off a commercial pattern. I know the pattern companies do put out crap halloween costume patterns that come out like this.

[AccountingDrone]

Those people are out of luck with me. I am not their personal shopper, or seamstress or whatever. I'll help to a certain extent, and if that's not good enough I recommend sewing classes at several local shops. Our store doesn't offer them.

And you forgot one major Halloween issue... Price! They want that Elizabethan gown to not only take one day, but cost less than $20! There are so many reasons why that specific holiday gets to me. This year EVERYONE is going to want to be a certain popular Disney character. And I have the worst time with it because I didn't care for it. It wouldn't be so bad, it's just that I have to hear about it multiple times per day. And they want to make the dress, and it's expensive and the pattern instructions are weird, and they want ME to tell them if the color fabric they picked is right.

Hm, Simplicity 7756, view B is peasant wench-ish, calls for an assorted 13 or so yards of materials, which I could get in differing discount fabric store local to me that buys up odd lots from other stores and sells everything for $2. In a pinch with no labor costs I could put someone it one for $40 though it would be a combination of natural and synthetic fabrics and probably not the types listed. [uphoulstry fabrics and drapery fabrics are not the best clothing fabrics, but they can be bought cheaply - especially at goodwill type thrift stores. Drapery sheers are great for veils.]

[EricKei]

What makes people think they can just buy some fur and "whip up" a costume??

My theory is that people are set in the fast-food, instant-gratification, I want it NOW so I will have it NOW! - syndrome. These same people, for whom that very speed is dependent upon the expert always being somebody else, seem to be under the delusion that if they're doing it themselves, it'll be fast and easy. Here's hoping they get themselves some VERY rude awakenings ^_^

On a couple of side notes:

-- Two fabric/etc type stores just opened in my town in the past month, pretty much simultaneously o_O Let's call them the rhyming Hut of Hobbies and the generic guy's name who likes Life cereal (I know damn well that there are plenty of people on that board who catch that reference). I can't help but envision them in a battle to the death.

-- I'm no tailor, but I can sew my own buttons and patches, and hell, I can even figure out the arcane mathematical contortions needed to successfully assemble a pillow - and do so right-side-out at least half the time! No way I'd be able to do most of the stuff youse guys are talking about o_O Tho I do at least understand the lingo, as a client of mine back at AccountingFirm was a little old lady who ran a quilting shop

[MoonCat]

Hmm, I once managed to replace a zipper on a pair of jeans, and I can replace buttons That's about the extent of it. I can't sew a straight line.

Some years ago when my sisters and I wanted to get involved in SCA, I sewed a VERY, VERY basic and plain Anglo-Saxon-type tunic and overgown. It worked out okay but made it clear to me that very involved sewing of costumes was not going to be an interest of mine. At least not without a good sewing machine. I have nothing but respect for people who can make their clothes and costumes.

[Seshat]

I could make a costume which would be representative of either of the Popular Recent Movie's protagonists'.

But the key word is 'representative'.
IE, it would be a blue undergown and a sheer overgown, and there wouldn't be the graduated shimmer, nor the snowflake design.
Or a royal blue skirt (possibly gored, possibly just shaped cuts, or gathered if it's for a child who doesn't care that much about details), teal shirt, black vest with gold trim, and cloak that makes faaaar too much use of french curves. But without the embroidery on the skirt, and if the wearer wants anything on the edges of the cloak, it's shop-bought trim. Supply your own boots.

[ladyjaneinmd]

I've worked in several fabric stores (50 years of sewing here. Started at 4 years old), and the one I remember the most is the young lady who came in to buy a lot of yards of our cheapest black Halloween costume fabric, and the simple Simplicity pattern, because her boyfriend insisted that she have a costume to wear to the party, THAT NIGHT. It was 5pm, and she was going to 'borrow my mom's machine and figure it out'. Yeah, good luck with that, dearie. I saw a lot of that kind of stuff around Halloween, including the lady who bought rolls and rolls of Stitch Witchery, so she could 'stick the whole thing together - no sewing!', for her child.
*shudder*

[Argus]

Like a really important and critical character from something more recent?

Or maybe something from only three months ago.

[Teskeria]

My Mom would spend a few hours putting outfits together for us kids for Easter. She'd cut them out over the Sat the week prior, adjusting sizes downward with each cut for us 5 girls and then cut out my brothers male outfit. she would pin all pieces together (and I mean pin, no basting even), The night before Easter she would sew (with her machine) everyone's outfit together. When we got up on Easter we each had a nice new suit of clothes. And they lasted the summer, with a little time into the school year.
Me? I only passes sewing class cause the teacher didn't want to have me in her class again. poor teacher.

[Food Lady]

Are you me?

LOL I pretty much grew up in House of Fabrics and Cloth World.

[sms001]

I wonder what the emergency need was for black and white upholstery fabric.

I can think of several. NONE of them good.

It seems like an outfit like this would take an awful lot of work

All I can ever think about when I see Disney paraphenalia is their pack of ruthless lawyers from The Simpsons.

[wolfie]

People also tend to make risque costumes, and since I am on the younger side of employees, they expect that I'll think it's funny. "You're going as a giant genitalia (male or female)?

At least they're letting people know that they're a pr**k (or a c**t, as the case may be).

[Cecily]

LOL I pretty much grew up in House of Fabrics and Cloth World.

I remember playing with the thread bobbins, sorting them by colours. I still love going to fabric stores, specially the ones where there is barely enough space to walk between shelvings, you have to dig in the piles and bolts are standing 6 or 7 deep against the walls. I even found the ones where the Cirque du Soleil costume people get their stuff .

I don't make clothes anymore but I like special projects, I just finished sprucing up a set of dining room chairs. Now I need to finish that baby play blanket.

[Ironclad Alibi]

To this day, I wonder what the emergency need was for black and white upholstery fabric.

I suspect that only five minutes before calling her kid told her that they needed a costume for the school play the next morning. Which is surprising since most kids tell their parent that the morning of the play.

[notalwaysright]

Since this tread is still alive, I'll add something. I would consider myself an intermediate sewer. My construction is good, not great, and my top stitching is never straight. I've been sewing for about a little more than 10 years, costumes, regular clothes, home decor like curtains and pillows, and tons of baby shower presents. I still get people who will use a term I've never heard before, and act like I'm an idiot for not knowing. Usually it is a specific brand that we don't carry. When I ask what it's for, THEY suddenly don't know ANYTHING about the product. We very likely have an equivalent product, but I won't know until I have a little information. Is it for quilting, a stabilizer, a fabric, what?

[Mondestrucken]

Years ago at Joann's, I was scheduled to work 4th of July, and they were having a huge sale on quilting fabrics. It was absolute chaos. Women were fighting and screaming over bolts of fabric, and the line for the cutting table (where I worked) stretched the length of the store.

This one lady gets up to my counter. "Do you have any more of this?" she asks, fondly caressing a bolt with no more than a yard of fabric on it. "It is so sweet. I just have to have lots of it." I did the mandatory check in the back, but all the quilting stuff had been placed up front for the sale. "Can you call some of the other Joann's and see if they have it?" The assistant manager okayed me to call ONE of them, but it was the closest one and the largest at that time in the state.

So I called and relayed my request. I could hear customers screaming in the background, so I knew it was just as bad there. The clerk said she would look, and I was placed on hold. I am still trying to cut fabric for other customers while on hold, but after 15 minutes (I would never do that today), I pretended to have a conversation. "Oh, you don't? Okay, I'll let her know." I hung up tha phone and said, "No, they don't have it. They did say the pattern has been discontinued. But if they don't have it, no one does."

The woman continued to stand there, caressing her little piece of material. "So sweet, such a sweet pattern." I thought she was going to cry.

But I learned. On crazy busy days, I aim for volume, and I don't do special requests. (Fortunately, at the DMV, we are not even allowed to make phone calls on behalf of any customers.) And in retail situations, when the place is in chaos, I am not going to make some special request that shuts the place down, because at the minimal wages those workers are paid, they don't need the higher grief of waiting on me and my sweet, sweet whatevers.