A couple of weeks ago I had a phone call from Fannie B wanting me to tell her all about the Pleat N Go.
Fannie lives in California and is a few years older then I am. We started out laughing about our rhyming names and remembering songs: Fannie, Fannie bo Bannie… (don’t forget that little trick with Nick!) and nick-names like one of mine: Annie Bananie.
What? You wanted us to just dive into sewing stuff?
We have a mutual problem with losing things; you put them down and they mysteriously walk off. She’s still doing some custom sewing while I stopped years ago. The issues haven’t changed though: people wear the wrong foundation garments to fittings; tell you the wrong initial sizings; pick styles that are really not flattering and of course don’t want to pay you when the garment is ready.
I was ready to nominate Fannie for sainthood for her patience alone.
So we finally started talking about the pleater board. She had tried to do pleats without the board and was real frustrated - so the hunt began! After lots of phone calls one turned up - a fair drive from her home and costing $40. That wasn’t going to cut it.
Fannie called a good friend here in Dallas needing a sympathetic shoulder, and the lovely lady told her about our pleater board kit. Six Degrees of Separation anyone?
We talked pleater boards. The how to’s, putting it together, using it, the step-by-step demo we have on the site, the different ways you can use the pleats. We discussed the regular board versus the fan board and the original idea to create it.
I had a blast! When you find you’re laughing together every 5th sentence, it’s just got to be good.
Fannie got the regular board (I wouldn’t sell her the fan board until she was sure she liked the standard one) and promised to call me after it arrived. She did - we talked - and she was heading off to put it together and create pleats.
About four days after that, Fannie called again. That was one happy woman on the phone. She was amazed at how quickly the pleats were created and made me promise to tell Storm (my good friend and the creator of the boards) that she did good!
To understand why she had been so frantic about making the pleats Fannie gave me the pattern name and number to see for myself. Oh boy. I’d have been borderline hysterical myself.
Fannie promised to call again; I hope it’s soon as I could use more of that kind of shared laughter.
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