The last four and a half months have been nothing short of busy, getting ready for the Strawberry Festival and The Barrie Fair this summer.
The paragraphs below include a little bit of my production journey this year.
Since leaving my job to pursue my fashion design career in February, I have been working endlessly to make sure I am ready for the festival season! For the past few years, I have been interested in having a booth at one of these events. Unfortunately, with the amount of work I needed to put into fashion designing, plus the 8 hour days I was already putting in to my graphics job, it was too exhausting and just not possible.
After leaving I went full force into fashion designing! Producing 12 new patterns and working out the initial bugs by making samples, I was gearing up to enter 2-3 festivals this summer. These 12 different products each have several variations in fabric content, colours, and patterns so there is something for everyone. In total, I have produced about 300 individual pieces in the last few months, and this is just in preparation for the Strawberry Festival this Canada Day weekend (4 days left to go).
Once the Strawberry Festival is finished, I will be back on the clock sewing more garments for The Barrie Fair coming at the end of August. These new pieces will all be made with different fabrics and colours.
Through the process of creating all of these pieces, I learned that some of our simplest designs – like our children’s aprons – are actually the most time consuming when it comes to production. This was especially clear to me when producing our 60 Children’s Aprons. For upcoming festivals as well as custom orders on our site – which we hope to begin accepting in the early fall – this design will be changing to align more with our Adult Apron style, but still using fun fabric patterns!
Photographing all of the products is certainly the most fun when it comes to the advertising aspect of the business. I am not the biggest fan of marketing, but it is easier to showcase what I have produced visually rather than write about each piece endlessly. Our countdown to the Strawberry Festival is already up on our Instagram, with more posts to come during the weekend, and leading up to the Barrie Fair!
I even put in several hours this past weekend putting together a trial run of the booth set-up. You can see the mock set-up – panorama style – below.
After very late nights, racks of clothing all over my house, and so much support from my family and friends, I am so excited to finally be in the homestretch! 4 Days Left… See you in Whitchurch-Stouffvile this weekend for Apricari Fashion’s 1st ever festival and public launch!
Check out our 2023 Festivals page to learn more about where Apricari Fashion will be and what pieces are available for purchase.