Endurance Sewer

Hello, I'm Cristina, the person behind karmologyclinic. If we were to call ourselves in accordance with what we have studied then I would say I'm a stage and costume designer and a photographer but the truth is that I've never really worked for long in these fields. I started sewing 12 years ago, when I couldn't find what I wanted to wear in shops and I thought, it shouldn't be too hard to make clothes I'd want to wear all by myself. Back then I only had my grandma's vintage sewing machine with a foot pedal, a burda magazine and advices from an aunt that knew a bit about sewing and would explain terminology to me. Since then I've never stopped sewing, first for myself, then for my friends and a lot later for others. I upgraded machines, educated myself in fashion design and patternmaking, sizing, professional techniques. Nowadays, I'm the one that provides my aunt with sewing help.

As a small clothing label owner, I have found that you have to reinvent meanings. I constantly ask myself, why do I do this that way, is there a better way, what does it mean to me, what does it mean to others.

Being the maker and the designer at the same time is overwhelming but also has all sorts of advantages. You control the production of each item, so that it meets your standards, you can challenge yourself to get a little bit better each time you make something, you can meet special requests from clients, you can limit the time distance between an idea and the finished product to a few days, heck, sometimes even a few hours! You have this lovely brocade fabric in your stock, you're looking at it and it's looking back at you for weeks. Then one afternoon, you think "skirt!". "Keep it a simple one", the fabric argues, "I want to show off". 'Ok, fabric dear' you reply. You make the pattern, cut, sew, finish. Next morning you wear the skirt, take photos, upload. Aaaaand repeat.

Despite the everyday challenges and superhuman multitasking abilities that are needed 24/7, I really love what I do! One of the reasons is that you never get bored. Design, patternmaking, making, stitching, hand-stitching, photography, curation, communication with customers, social media marketing.

And when I need some fresh air I wear my running shoes and run outdoors. I am an avid runner, started just to lose a few pounds, fell in love with it, found out I'm actually good at it too. Running gave me the gift of endurance, both physically and mentally. It taught me to never quit, even if I sometimes have to crawl.

My feline friends, Banana and Yelos, you'll see them posing around me in many listing photos. I'm trying to teach them how to be productive in my sewing studio but most of the time they sleep. Or, when they don't, they believe they're computer savvy, step on my laptop and press random keys on the keyboard. My new kitten Lizzy, helps me with packaging. She mostly steals my packaging string and hides it from me. That's as helpful as it gets from them.

You'll find more background stories of cats, running and sewing studio behind-the-scenes in my Instagram account, it's @karmologyclinic.