Designing Clothing with Aphantasia
I have aphantasia, which means I don't form mental images. I also have alexithymia, part of which means I can't imagine. So... how does it work for me to design clothing without being able to imagine or form mental images of things I haven't already seen? Patterns. Patterns are great, patterns are my friend. They teach me new techniques and new ways of putting things together. Most of the time I use the whole pattern, but sometimes the only way to get the garment I want is to heavily modify a pattern or smush features from two different patterns together. I have a sewing mood board where I stick images of fabrics and designs next to each other until it feels right. Then, when it's time to actually make the garment, it's fine if I did the planning and design months ago, because I already put any relevant notes on the mood board or a text document I keep for designs which aren't fully formed yet. Because I'm hand-sewing, and even small lines of stitching tak...