Forget talent, genius and aptitude, if you do anything for 10,000 hours you can be an expert in your field, says Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers. I'd love to be a sewing expert so I thought I'd take an inventory of how far off I am from "expert" status, by clocking my sewing hours.
Year 8 school sewing lessons, then private sewing lessons with a meticulous little old lady named Mrs Quinn 70 hours
Loved making clothes and became a bit obsessed with home sewing in my younger days 175 hours
Ran my own visual merchandising business In the Window, where I sewed some backdrops and props 50 hours
Event styling at Staging Connections - some sewing of napery and curtains 15 hours
Great patternmaking course with Brisbane dressmaker Ana Fataciolli 200 hours
Ran Clothesline patterns on a full time basis for a year producing paper patterns 1500 hours
Realised you can survive on charm for the first 15 minutes, after that you better know something. Back to school - Advanced Diploma in Fashion at Tafe (This was really hard work, harder than the science degree I got after I left school. Honest! ) 5000 hours
Unpaid slave labour aka internships at Kitten d'Amour and Inkahootz ( two great Brisbane businesses) 80 hours
Sewing a dress a week for new blog, time wasted looking at sewing tutorials and pinterest sewing pages and putzing about in my attic sewing room 1500 hours
Frenzied activity sewing really fast at a local alterations shop 300 hours
Total: 8890 hours. That means with just 1100 hours to go I'll be an expert. Can't wait!