Share a part of the life of our collaborators by discovering their hobbies! This month, let's talk about Magali Billard, our Group Financial Controller, and her passion for sewing.
What is your double life?
I have been sewing for many years in my spare time..
When and how did you start?
I started as a child, my grandmother, who was a seamstress and Singer saleswoman, taught me how to sew small items at an early age. As I grew up, she taught me how to use a sewing machine and guided me through the first clothes I made for myself.
What do you like about sewing?
I enjoy picking out a pattern (a garment model) and imagining which fabric I will use to create it. I like to begin a project from scratch and to be able to create a "concrete item". The unique side of the clothes, with my choice of pattern/fabric combinations, is what drives me.
And in your daily life, how does your passion fit in?
Sewing is a passion that can take up a lot of time and space. I usually have several projects in mind but I try to do one project per month. I "work" on the project beforehand by choosing a pattern, I also take the time to look for the fabric that seems to me the most in adequacy between the pattern, the season but also the desire of the moment. I share this passion with several people around me, so I regularly meet them to share a sewing afternoon.
Have you acquired skills that you use in your professional life?
Yes, sewing teaches thoroughness but also the acceptance of failure, indeed a choice of fabrics can be unwise and cause a project to fail completely. It taught me to be persistent and to accept to start with simple and small projects and then increase the level of difficulty.
As a financial controller, I need this discipline but I also need to reinvent new tables or new types of monitoring, and this aspect requires a certain amount of imagination about the expected end result and I find this skill in sewing.
The steps of a financial report are more or less the same from one month to the next, and the same format can be found in sewing, with a learning of new techniques with each realization!
Thank you Magali for answering our questions!