April Update!

It's Deranged Designs monthly update time. When I first started doing this, I called it "weekly update". Then forgot about it till the next month.

I just finished making three animal print hoodie orders. On the last bit of sewing- the sleeve cuff- my industrial overlock machine decided to un-thread itself. Shit like this seems to happen all the time. I'll be almost finished with something on my normal machine, then the bobbin thread will run out 1 inch before the seam is finished. (Happened yesterday in class) The industrial machine doesn't usually have thread breakage problems, but when it does, its a pain in the ass to re-thread it. I have to get out the industrial size tweezers and fuck around with it for half an hour to see what the problem is. All while wishing that the thread would have held on for another minute so I could finish that one last detail!

I've had an extremely frustrating month. I'm only taking two classes this semester but they happen to be the two most time-consuming classes in the entire Los Rios fashion program. Fashion collections at American River College (the class that makes the clothes for the annual school fashion show) and Tailoring at Sac City College. While, of course, keeping up with hoodie orders and other business stuff. (Thanks, Dad, for doing my taxes again!) I've got an all or nothing attitude when it comes to school and business. Either I'm gonna put 100% into everything or I'm not going to try at all. I haven't been able to do that this semester. I've taken one night off this entire month and I still feel like I've left everything to the last minute.

The school fashion show is next Friday, May 7th, at 7pm, 7 bucks. Its in the new black box theatre at ARC. Right next to the northwest parking lot. I'll have 8 outfits to show. There are 15-ish other designers, all with between 5 and 10 outfits. I'm proud of my collection and I can't wait to get pictures of everything, but I feel that I really didn't have enough time to do everything I wanted to do. Like I could have been capable of much more if I wasn't torn between so many priorities. I drive myself nuts with so many ideas and things I want to do. I wish I was one of those freaks that only need 3 hours of sleep a night to be fully functional. Instead I'm stuck with needing 8 hours. Wake up at 7, work all fucking day, pass out at 11. The only reason I'm awake past 11 tonight is because I took an hour nap this afternoon!

Alright, enough moping, here's all the shit I'm looking forward to this summer!

-Having time to work instead of going to school! This summer I'm focusing on something I should have done ages ago: creating clothing pattern blocks in lots of different styles and sizes. So I can put something new on my website, offer it in 4-5 sizes, and make it until the fabric runs out.

-Cleaning up/remodeling my house and clearing out half the basement to make a Deranged Designs showroom/boutique! Not really sure how well the boutique idea will work out but me and several roommates are going to remodel the fuck out of this house. There's a basement show on June 26th, we are thinking of making it an all day punk rock yard sale/show/whatever to raise money. Three years ago the Secretions did the same thing and raised hella money for their summer tour. Ideas for the house include a homemade hot tub in the backyard and a punk rock sistine chapel in the basement. Andre's gonna paint the ceiling! He's a tattoo artist so this can only turn out awesome. We just need some money for paint. Oh, and Eoin wants to turn the fridge into a robot. And personally I plan to fix up both bathrooms. And call the fucking landlord to fucking install a fucking new roof over my sewing room, I'm sick of the disgusting yellow water that comes out of the ceiling in a zillion different places along the perimeter of the wall. And the same water that rains down through the downstairs bathroom and kitchen. Gross!

-Making this blog into a sewing nerd heaven. A long ass time ago I wanted to write up a punk rock sewing guide, with sewing tutorials and tips for everybody. Now that there's a million sewing tutorials already on the web, I want to do something different. I'll start with doing a write-up of all the fashion industry stuff I visited while in New York. I took about 200 pictures on that trip so hopefully I can remember everything I learned.

I usually put up pictures of all the new stuff I've added over the past month, but I'm really tired right now and its simpler to just put a website link up, since its all on the front page of my website anyways.

http://store.derangeddesigns.com/

I also have a sample sale going on right now! Click: http://store.derangeddesigns.com/clearance.html

And I've been adding a lot of photos to my flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/derangeddesigns/collections/

Including a flickr group where you can upload pics of your own handmade clothing (to replace that old section on my website):
http://www.flickr.com/groups/1360537@N24/

Anything else to mention? Um...
My friend Avi has turned his "new" house in San Francisco into THE FUTURE...just go to the facebook link, you might understand:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/San-Francisco-CA/THE-FUTURE/118187931533049

Can't wait to go to the first show there! Haven't been to the bay since January. Yikes. Haven't left my fucking house this month except to go to school. OK time to stop thinking about my life.

I took phone pics of my tailoring jacket project, my scary industrial machine, and some stuff I've been working on from the fashion show and attempted to send them to my email address, but it looks like that failed. No pictures today. Just reading. HA.