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Hi, I'm Dara McGinn and I own Li Sashay which is located in Raleigh, North Carolina.
We are a design and manufacturing company and we do textile designs
we do everything from handbags and shoes all the way up to special projects
for the Army and Navy where we would
make specific equipment like renewable kites
um, rescue vehicles. A lot of the Army and Navy contracts
are great because it really pushes the boundaries in terms of what we can do
so we like doing projects like that because you never know where they're gonna go.
This week we're actually filming for a reality TV show it's called
"Trim the Waste". It's with Parson's school of design and UCTV
and it's up in New York and we are making a hundred tote bags
which is the average amount of fabric believe it or not that
the average American consumer, man, woman and child buys in one year
in the US. And we're looking at the waste produced from that and then how we can reduce it and renew it.
I'm gonna take you through a basic a basic design process that I do
this if for making the tote bags for the reality tv show.
We start with fabric
and we cut the fabric first
and you can either do this with a ruler and tailor's chalk
or, if you've thought about this and have done this a couple of times
you can use a pattern.
Either way you need math to do this
or your stuff won't look good. Alright, the math involved in making a woman's bag
involves basically a woman's arm.
Most women can reach comfortably 14-18 inches into a bag
that's how their bodies are built.
And, they like to store about 4 inches thick. So when you do this you have
2 inches plus 2 inches which equals 4 inches
which is how you determine how wide the bag is
and you measure from the top-down
and it comes to here, and this is a 20 inch bag
before we cut it all down. So that once we cut it down
it'll probably be able 19 inches which is a little bit deep
but a lot of women like their tote bags slightly deeper.
You would iron it, then you sew it together, then you iron again and you finish it.
Well I originally started on the factory floor in Charlotte, North Carolina
at a little place right outside of town called Gastonia
and the math skills involved basically helped take me
from the factory floor to owning my own design shop.
It was pretty much a direct correlation because once you understand what you're making
then you can do it yourself. I've always loved fabric and making things
because, you know you wear clothes everyday
it's something that you put on in the morning
that you put on when you go to sleep, that it really touches people's lives in a positive way.
And I love the idea of making something
that I can go out and see people wear and enjoy.
It's just really a tangible gift.
There's just, there's no substitute in my mind for making a real impact every day in people's lives.