Alyssa Hofmann one-upped her silver medal from last year and brought home the gold from this year’s Fashion Technology event at the Skills Canada Saskatchewan competition on April 17.
“The hardest part is probably just getting it done in the time limit. The eight hours is just not a lot of time for error, not a lot of time to fix mistakes and if you do, there’s not a lot of time for anything else,” she said.
This year’s competition took place in Moose Jaw from April 16-17. At the start of the competition, she was given a pattern of a jacket that she had to construct within eight hours according to the criteria given. Contestants were given the pattern at the end of December and had until the competition to practice it.
“You get points for making it unique and another score for following the pattern,” she said. “If you eliminated something from the jacket, you would get docked marks because you didn’t follow the pattern … if you have to put an embellishment, make sure you get that or you’ll get docked a couple marks.”
Hofmann said it was very stressful at the start when they were first given the patterns, then she became relaxed in the middle while working it. Towards the end, however, she said, “Your fingers are just going mad and you’re super stressed and not sure if you’re going to finish.”
“You want to make sure that everything is the right measurements, your seam allowances are right, everything is straight, you have nice crisp lines, nothing is on backwards, the pieces are all the right way and you have to make sure everything is kind of clean. You don’t want threads everywhere,” she said.
Hofmann was one of four students from Humboldt Collegiate Institute who participated. The other three included Lisa Popoff in the Baking event, Vance Hill in Carpentry and Abigail Seidel in Photography.
Hofmann will be going on to represent Saskatchewan at the Skills Canada National Competition (SCNC) in Saskatoon on May 26-29.
