So in the last part (if you missed it, you can read it here), we talked a bit about the Grenouille's history and introduced you to Siriporn (the factory owner) and Yui (the factory manager). In this blog, we'll show your around the factory, introduce a few more of the wonderful team that we work with and follow the process of making our garments.
Mr. Min Naning (photo below) is the head of the cutting department , overseeing the team that kicks off the production process on the top floor of the factory. The team starts unrolling and layering the fabric on the cutting table, which runs almost the whole length of the factory, before laying the template paper that’s his team has pre-marked with the cutting patterns.
To maximise the number of items you get from the fabric, whilst still considering the direction of the weave and pattern takes knowledge and skill, so it’s no surprise that good fabric cutter regularly get poached by other factories. The final step before it moves downstairs to the machine floor, is to cut out the fabric with the vicious looking straight knife cutting machines (how they don’t end up missing a finger or two is beyond me!) and mark the position of any darts to be added.
On the machine floor, the bundles of fabric pieces are taken to various stations to start the process of joining them together. As the vast majority of our designs include buttoned plackets, collars and cuffs, the fabric that’s used to make these elements need to be reinforced / stiffened with an interfacing fabric. We’re very particular about the weight, thickness and quality of interfacing and know this can make a huge difference when wearing the finished item; we try to avoid overly stiff collars and never expect any bubbling / separation to occur after the washing or ironing in the future. Mr Kyazimoo (photo and video below) is responsible for this stop of production and I’ll be brutally honest, I think this is one of the toughest jobs in the factory. The machine used to fuse the interfacing to the fabric is like an oven with a conveyor belt running through it and the heat given off is stifling.
The rest of the machine floor is split between two sewing line teams and a button team. Miss Aye Sumon (on the left) and Miss Hsuu Katzin (on the right) lead the sewing line teams and the precision and pace at which they work will never cease to amaze me.
The last stop on the machine floor is the button team, which is managed by Miss May (photo below). They first mark the position of the buttons according to the design they’re making; if you ever look behind the button on a shirt, you might see the pen / chalk mark they use to do this. They then use a specialised button sewing machine to add the buttons and buttonholes.
We hope you've enjoyed seeing this part of the process of making our garments and meeting a few of the amazingly skilled people that help bring out designs to life. You can read about the final finishing steps of the production process in the next blog.