Spring 2018: Kid’s pants manufacturing

Kathleen on March 10, 2018

Spring 2018: Kid’s pants manufacturing

Next Friday, our Spring 2018 event officially begins. Friday is somewhat anticlimactic because people start arriving as early as the Tuesday, or even Monday, prior. It is an exciting time, lots of positive and young energy fills the place up. And, many hands make light work of all the set up that is involved in organizing an event of this magnitude.

So let’s meet the pre-production team who volunteered to organize the projects we’re undertaking. Left to right (back), Rhonda, Celeste, Emily, Melanie. Front row: Lisa, Sammy and Courtney. This crew was unusual in that nearly everyone (except Courtney from Canada) was local. We did have two people from out of town but they had to cancel for pre-production (they’ll be here for production). It’s very affirming that we had so many local residents this time, first time ever.

Our crew had the task of testing several pant styles for suitability in our environment. Specifically, these were the criteria they had to fulfill:

  • Create an industrial engineering work study to determine the number of operations, sewing time per operation and type of equipment will we need.
  • Analyze the sewing skills we need to train for and finalize a plan to manage the challenges of an unknown workforce.
  • Assist with cut order planning (calculating yields), creating the master schedule to order goods, final costing, and generally learning how to manage production soup to nuts.
  • Finalize the sourcing plan to include the costs and inventory we need to complete the project.

So, no small feat.

Notes on upcoming Fall 2018

There has been scattered discussion among stakeholders about doing something different for Fall 2018 when we traditionally make coats. It has been suggested that the upcoming event should be invitation only, invitations primarily extended to alums of previous events. This could be seen as exclusionary but we are testing a whole gamut of changes in how we do things and for assessment purposes, alumni have something to compare with and ideally, they’d have a better idea of what is working and what isn’t as we look forward to Spring 2019.

The other idea is that we will begin to hold a lottery for registrants. Reason being, our slots fill so quickly now that many interested candidates never get the chance to register in time to be considered. So, the latter is also a possibility. I’m not sure how long I should keep registration open for the lottery -maybe a month?

So, this is all that has been happening around here. There is much more of course but as I am remiss in posting, one can draw inaccurate conclusions. Attendees post a lot of photos and such to Instagram. Search with the #abqfi hashtag for a more complete picture.

And to remind you, our 501c3 charitable status was approved in January 2018. We welcome whatever support you can provide. Call if you like.


5 Replies to “Spring 2018: Kid’s pants manufacturing”

  1. Jaimee Griffin March 10, 2018 at 7:55 pm

    Not to sound precocious, I would like to be considered for the lottery list or as a possible invitation person if you decide to go that route.

    Manufacturing different or more intricate items sounds exciting. I feel much more confident and experienced than a year ago, thanks in a large part to abqfi experience and stretching myself and others in our company. Thanks.
    Jaimee Griffin

    Reply

  2. Karen Spizer March 10, 2018 at 9:46 pm

    Hello. I understand space is limited. I’m holding out time to particpate for the first time. Karen

    Reply

  3. Adriane Murray March 11, 2018 at 7:30 pm

    Hello. I have been so looking forward to the opportunity to attend when I had the funds. Hoping I will finally be able to participate this year.
    AJ

    Reply

  4. Sarah Rowe March 12, 2018 at 5:31 pm

    Hi Kathleen!
    Congrats on the non profit status!
    I can’t believe it was a year ago that I was at abqfi but I still constantly think about it and would love to do it again. It inspired me to take pattern making in boston and I’m already on level 2!

    Perhaps you could do a combination of your ideas – a lottery system to make it a little more fair on who gets in rather than just the people who read your blog post first, but you have quotas – ie a % would be returning alumni and the rest new folks.

    Hope this upcoming boot camp goes well!

    Sarah Rowe

    Reply

  5. Shakira Johnson August 20, 2018 at 3:51 pm

    My heart is beating fast to see that something like this sctually exists. In short, I’m excited. Please don’t be exclusionary, as I just stumbled on this site this very moment. I am interested in your Spring 2019 session since fall is virtually here. Please provide sign up ingo so I msy secure a spot. Thank you in advance.

    Reply

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