Contract Freelance Sample

Admin | January 20, 2012 | Comments Off

Contract Freelance Sample

Contract Freelance Sample

Your sewing skills - make the most of them.

They will ask you what you can do. A tricky question. You don’t want to say: 'Nothing too difficult!' as you might be pegged as useless before you’ve had a chance to shine. However, do not say: ‘Oh, anything!’ because this is a professional studio, and 'anything' means something here. Some machinists really can sew anything. They are the experts, the highly experienced, the well trained, who are given the trickiest, most skilled jobs. If you say you can sew anything, you might be given something very difficult indeed – or worse, something difficult and expensive, that you can easily ruin and cost the company. Most machinists don’t sew “anything”. They have general skills of course, but usually they tend to stick to a specific area of expertise. As a beginner, you don’t have an area of expertise, but imagine you did. What do you have the most experience sewing? If you were going to choose an area to become an expert in, what would it be? Are you good with stretch knit? Can you handle delicate chiffons or tulle quite well? Do you feel safer with woven fabrics? Do you enjoy making outerwear or corsetry? Decide before you even arrive what your strengths are and what you feel happiest doing. Then, when you get asked: 'What can you do?', you will be able to say something more useful than: 'Something easy please!'

Fashion studios have rules

Find out the house rules. After you have been given your assignment and the studio manager has bustled off again, before you even pick up your fabric, turn to the machinist next to you and, very nicely, ask her some questions. Every sample room has certain rules or preferences for working, which produce the quality standard for that fashion company’s output. Perhaps, fabric is never pressed on the right side. Perhaps, fabric must be pressed before stitching. Perhaps no steaming is allowed. Perhaps French seams must be a certain width. Perhaps, only the Bernina fine-stitching sewing machine is used to finish certain fabrics. You must know these things before you start, and they can be tricky to find out. Everyone is busy. Maybe only the other machinists know them. Start talking and make some friends fast – you will need help.