Reading List
This is the required reading list for Apparel Manufacturing Boot Camp, updated as of 10/27/2019. For your convenience, pages open in a new tab. Pages from The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Sewn Product Manufacturing are abbreviated “EGTSPM.”
I will send the link to the quiz based on this material via email. The quiz is an open book test that must be completed no later than 6 weeks prior to the event you’ve registered for.
Test material:
- Everyone should do things my way
- Standard work
- Better sewing quality with work instructions
- The rules on seam allowances
- The rules on seam allowances pt.2
- To pin or not to pin
- Marking & Cutting
- A refresher on basic industrial sewing concepts
- Deconstructing a [home] sewing class
- Beginner’s guide to sewing with industrial machines
- Interfacing: 10 tips
- What is shade marking?
- What is cuttable width?
- Beginner’s guide to sewing with industrial machines pt. 2
- Tutorial: Centered zipper construction
Most of our zippers will finish the same as this tutorial explains, top and bottom. - EGTSPM pp: 65-66 Do you need a pattern maker?
- EGTSPM pp: 125 Production Sewing 101.
- EGTSPM pp: 126-128 Production Sewing 101.
- EGTSPM pp:129-132 Industrial Sewing Theory.
- Batch, UPS and Modular batch pt.1
- Batch, UPS and Modular batch pt.2
In addition to the above, Pre-production sign ups should read the below too. It is also recommended for people who are serious about sewing during boot camp:
- Tracing and Marking (if you don’t read this before coming to pre-pro, NO SOUP FOR YOU!)
- Designers must know: Seam allowances and specifications
- Video: how to walk a pattern
- How to walk a pattern pt.2
- Checking a pattern pt.2
- How many notches are too many?
- How many notches are too many? pt.2
- Pop Quiz: Notching challenge
- Pop Quiz: Notching challenge pt.2
- Lazy pattern making
- Where is ease permissible
- Where is ease permissible pt.2
- EGTSPM pp: 114-120
- We’ll be using these instructions to sew the bomber jacket. One may decide to purchase it beforehand for an overview of all of the sewing processes we’ll follow.
- How to sew faster pt.3
- Industrial sewing instructions
- Industrial sewing instructions pt.2
- Training green sewing operators
- Training sewing machine operators pt.2
- EGTSPM pp:176-180 Production Pattern Making 101
- This is (an outdated) a list of the machines and equipment in the factory, scroll down to find it.
Extra credit!
You are strongly encouraged to sew samples of tutorials; you can mail them in. You can find the list here. The ones that will be most useful to you are these:
Centered zipper template
Centered zipper construction
Welt and paper jig
Welt pocket construction
Tutorial: Finishing the welt pocket
Video Links!
I’ll send these to you via email.
10/27/2019: End of Reading List
You can ignore anything below this point. I’d delete it but I may want to re-use parts of it, and WP Gutenberg being the horror that it is, I don’t know I’d ever get it back.
The reading list for Spring 2019 is a departure so if you’d read it before, there are a few additions (but more subtractions). The original list has been pushed down the page as we may need it in the future.
Pre-production people have additional assigned reading -a whole book- but production people are encouraged to read it too. Initially I’d intended to assign Training Within Industry: The Foundation of Lean but then decided that I wanted to consider The TWI Facilitator’s Guide: How to Use the TWI Programs Successfully. I apologize for the delay in making that decision, I should have realized how ambivalent I was. Please understand that I don’t want to waste your time and want to select the best material. I will update this page with the title we’ve chosen on Monday November 5, 2018. You will also be notified by email.
Note that pages from The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Sewn Product Manufacturing are abbreviated “EGTSPM.”
Required Reading
- Everyone should do things my way
- Standard work
- Better sewing quality with work instructions
- The rules on seam allowances
- A refresher on basic industrial sewing concepts
- Deconstructing a [home] sewing class You can skip to “work arounds”, listed in bold.
- Beginner’s guide to sewing with industrial machines
- Beginner’s guide to sewing with industrial machines pt. 2
- EGTSPM pp: 125-128 Production Sewing 101
- EGTSPM pp:129-132 Industrial Sewing Theory
- Batch, UPS and Modular batch pt.1
- Batch, UPS and Modular batch pt.2
- How to sew faster pt.3
- Industrial sewing instructions pt.2
- Training sewing operators pt.2
- What is Kaizen? Incremental and small changes that have dramatic effects.
- The Crisis of Kaizen How saving my employer 25% of a style’s labor cost -which also delighted the stitchers- created downstream problems we never saw coming. With any luck we’ll have the same problems during Spring 2019 (there is a happy ending).
Things I’d like for you to read but are not required:
- Natural Capitalism, Chapter 7: Muda, Service, and Flow
- Problems in problem prevention
- Becoming a lean manufacturer
- You may find this interesting: a report from the National Academy of Sciences entitled U.S. Industry in 2000: Studies in Competitive Performance — specifically see the chapter on apparel manufacturing. It’s a broad sweep but you’ll learn the historic and endemic weaknesses that are inherent to the infrastructure of the industry. We can’t fix anything until we compare the odd variables of our business to how everybody else does things. Speaking of, it will also lead you to understand why other classes of manufacturing consider apparel people to be somewhat dimwitted — in part because they don’t fully appreciate the complex variables we face that they don’t.