In 1977 I was looking for a new job -- something creative with flexible hours. I was only one year into my long love affair with tennis, and wanted to be on the courts as often as possible. A friend of a friend owned a store in Walnut Square that featured hand-crafted clothing and needed someone to sew for her. Sounded flexible enough for me. I borrowed a sewing machine and got started. Who imagined that I would be retiring from owning that clothing store 37 years later?
The original By Hand was located on Walnut Street, two doors down from the original Peet’s Coffee. Susan, Elaine, Marianne and I took turns staffing the store for the day. The store was rustic, cozy and relaxed. I’d set my sewing machine on the main counter (which is now near our dressing rooms in the present store), zip down to Peet’s for a 25-cent refill, and sew blouses in the down time between customers.
Doing piecework for Susan and Elaine quickly evolved into me buying fabric and producing my own blouses. Adding soutache (a very thin ornamental braid) or ledges to yokes and collars of blouses and men’s shirts was a design detail that took a lots of time, but made each garment special. In the early 80’s Elaine, Susan and I teamed up to produce the BIDZ line of raw silk clothing. Eventually they decided to focus on the store, moved By Hand around the corner to Vine Street, and I continued designing under my Paula Z label.
During the Paula Z years I had a workshop in Emeryville where I did design work and garment cutting on a 20-foot long worktable, but my sewing machine was in the loft at By Hand on Vine St. Those years were a blur of trips back and forth between Berkeley and E’ville. I’d work on a design pattern and cut a sample in my workshop, go to By Hand to sew the sample and have the staff try it on. Then it was back to Emeryville to tweak the pattern, grade it (make patterns for different sizes) and eventually cut a run of 40 or 50 blouses. I’d stack five to ten layers of fabric, lay the patterns on top and cut them by hand or with my little circular saw. I’d take the collars, cuffs and facings home to iron on interfacing in the evening, then return them to the workshop to bundle in with the blouses that I would take to my seamstress. Once finished, the blouses needed pressing and buttonholes needed trimming before I could bring them to By Hand and put them on the racks.
Finding good fabric was always a challenge. I attended fabric trade shows and took three or four trips a year to LA in my search for unique, appealing fabric. I was always on the hunt for solid-colored sueded rayon for long-sleeved tailored blouses, textured tweeds for relaxed jackets, and fun prints for camp shirts and casual blouses. By the mid-nineties Susan and Elaine were buying more and more ready-to-wear clothes for the store, and I was having a harder time finding fabric that I liked to produce my line. When they decided to move to a larger storefront on Solano Avenue in 1995, I felt the timing was right to retire from my design business and try something new.
In 1996 studied for and earned a personal training certification and began training clients in their homes. I also established a website that reviewed exercise videos. Working out to videos, writing reviews and playing tennis kept me busy, but I kept my association with By Hand though, visiting weekly to hem pants and skirts, as I’d been doing through all the Paula Z years. I’m sure I’ve done thousands and thousands of hems over the years. Before I knew it, I began working on the sales floor one day a week for the holiday season. I was back at By Hand, this time as part of the staff.
Thanks to my partner Romy who always has my back.
Paula Z
