Hi Friends!

Last weekend I went “off island.” This is a common islander phrase. I was recently watching a sci-fi show and one of the characters said “off planet.” Same, same.

Anyway, while on The Mainland, I visited my nephew in Seattle. He very gamely tried out my kid legging prototype. My nephew is very excited about my leggings project—last time I visited he tried on a couple of adult samples I had, they fit him like a body sock. I’m not sure he’s super interested in the WWI battleship camouflage backstory, made in America, on demand printing, and what not. He is three after all. But he was very excited to don the leggings and take them to the park.

He was less excited to return them. But I promised him his very own pair.

The kid leggings are not as tricky to design because they’re a fairly simple garment and I think kids (and their parents) will tolerate louder, sillier designs. The kid legging has four colors on the Nebraska pattern. I’m not sure I’ll do a monochrome one for the kids pattern, what would be the fun in that?

In other news I am hard at work on the adult Nebraska leggings. I have the (third) prototype in hand. Overall I am much happier with it than the previous designs. It still needs some fine tuning, so I’ll have to do at least one more round of prototypes.

I am designing the leggings on Illustrator, a program I taught myself to use about 15 years ago. I’m working with a 2D template, which is quite challenging to imagine in 3 dimensions. The physical samples, and my newly acquired mannequin, and a very helpful island buddy/model are invaluable for checking the design with reality.

This..

…is this.

Things like seams and *exact* placement of design elements on the final legging are very difficult and in some cases impossible. Seams, for instance, will never line up perfectly due to the manufacturing process (they’re sewn by hand, nobody’s perfect.)

At this pace my leggings will be ready to sell in early March. It’s up to me to have a brand name in place by them. More on that later.