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I have a beautiful granddaughter who was born with Down syndrome. She has enough challenges to face in her life and I want to make sure that finding appropriately fitting clothes will not be one of them.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Finding Jillian

After Carrie told me she would not be able to help me with the designing, I didn’t get upset at all, I just knew I hadn’t found the right person yet.  So the next day I called back to the design school and spoke with the person in charge of job placement.  Carrie had been kind enough to call the school as well, and told them what I needed.   The woman at the school already had a name for me.  She told me about a girl that had graduated the previous year and still had not been working in her profession.  She said she might be available.  Her name was Jillian.
Jillian
I called Jillian right away and it was truly my lucky day.  I spoke with her for quite some time and knew immediately that I had found my designer.  She was very kind and sweet and was not working at the time; she was certainly available to start working right away.  We set up an appointment the very next day and I couldn’t wait to meet her in person.
We set up a meeting the very next day.  She was not only very sweet but very beautiful as well.  She was tall and dressed like a designer.  She came prepared and brought some of her work to show me.  She had graduated at the top of her class and, as an extra bonus, her mother was a seamstress.  She was ready to start anytime.  She did live quite far, but she didn’t mind driving at all.  It looked like I’d had another divine intervention.  As I realized later, Carrie had made the right decision not to get involved because she worked a full-time job.  The job for me became full time right away.  Once I found Jillian, she began working everyday and Downs Designs was moving forward!
Together we agreed to meet with the models.   I told her I had taken the measurements already, but now that I had her, I wanted her to start from scratch.  She knew what she was doing, and I was not the expert in this field.  So now that I had her available to work full time, I thought we could start from the beginning. 
So it began, we called all our models and set up a time to meet.  I decided that I would take pictures of our progress.  I wanted to start documenting our work.  What I was doing seemed to be going too well to be just a coincidence.   I thought maybe that five years from now I would have wished I had kept good records and pictures and by that time it would be too late.  Downs Designs is like a baby in the womb.  Right now it’s just beginning to develop.  The DNA is in place and it’s starting to take form.  Soon the arms and legs would begin to take shape.  I didn’t want to miss a thing!

3 comments:

  1. Great to meet Jillian.

    Looks like you and she have some great designs going from what I see on Facebook.

    Looking forward to seeing the shots!

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  2. Thanks so much Adelaide. We have many ideas for our future designs, but our first priority is our fit. We must make a pair of pants and a shirt for all our age groups. Once we are comfortable with how they fit, we then can begin to start to build our clothing line. I have completed the hardest part already and I think it will go much quicker for us now. We are almost finished with the youth jeans and shirts and then will finish the children's size. I think by the fall of next year we will be ready to begin developing more varieties and really start having some fun with our designs. Please be patient with us, this is such important work and we want to get it right for all the beautiful people with Down syndrome. Thanks for following my blog. I've been so busy preparing our first order and setting up our office and website, I haven't had a lot of time to write. Karen

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  3. I will be patient.

    If it is hard for me, imagine what it must be for the models.

    It is well to see you have completed the hardest part.

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