Um...yeah, that's my living room in the background (and Quentin on the couch sucking his thumb). After I got this thing pressed, on the dress form, wrapped up mummie style in my king size bed sheet, and got her downtown...I made it back to pick up Zoe from kindergarten with one minute to spare. So...the pics were taken in a hurry, but I know you guys have been dying to see it, so here it is!
There's a tiny bit of wobbly fit at the top of the bust area. I would kill to get my hands on someone who has several years experience making corsets to mentor me. I'm totally self taught and there are things that just don't always work for me, the area being the most troublesome.
The four areas where I printed words say "fashion", "haute couture", "chic", and "modiste"
Again, some areas of stress I would like to learn how to eliminate, a corset should look like you've been shelacked (sp?) into into it.
My favorite part (the back view) !


I think you get a really good feel here for the print. The swirls and letters were batiked with Batik EZ from Crafters Pick, then I used yellow and green in Jacaurd Dye-Na-Flo, then went back after that was dry and added small areas of teal and burgandy. Then washed out the Batik EZ with warm water, let it dry and stamped Jacaurd Luminere in Burgandy and Gold.

I also dyed the silk dupioni under the skirt bright orange, then dyed the silk organza burgandy and treated them as one fabric. It gives a nice shimmery effect to have the 2 contrasting colors.

Yeah, that didn't take 4 days or anything. But seriously, when I saw the final result it made me squeal. It's so cool to look at something like that and say "I MADE that!"

"Coming of Age"

That's the title of my piece for the Past, Present, and Future show for FAC Modern. There were quite of bit of "modifications" made, as I put this entire dress together in 5 days. The flowers over the shoulder, the tulle on the skirt, the shrug....all bit the dust. I am actually very happy with the print. On Monday, I had just white fabric. By Thursday, I had dyed and printed every color you see on this dress. It's all 100% silk. I made it to fit my model and she's not quite the same size as my dress form, so I'm not entirely pleased with the way the fit looks on the dress form, but I'll live. As soon as we're able to do the photo shoot, I'll have those pics up as well (had to cancel that Friday due to the snow)



Update, I've tried to upload these pics for about 20 minutes and blogger just won't do it, gotta run to Quentin's paint class, I'll try again later this afternoon!

It's blizzarding!

We're in the middle of a 'blizzard watch'. I took these pictures a few hours ago, it's been going strong since then as well. It's hard to tell right now if it's snowing, or just blowing around.

Oh, and here's a bonus picture of the peak taken a couple of days ago while waiting to pick up my daughter from school. People travel from all over the world to see what I get to see every day. I love it here!

To sew or not to sew.....

O.K. well, it's more like, should I sew some more?

I've been invited to submit an art peice to FAC MOD, our local Modern Arts Museum for their first annual Holiday show. It's such an honor to be invited, but I just don't know if I've got the time. The peice has to be submitted by Oct. 30th. Here's my sketch, if I do it:

O.K., this was a lightning fast concept sketch, now that I look at it, I'm thinking you probably can't tell anything about what I'm thinking. The top would be silk with batik and stamping in purple, orange, burnt umber to look something like this in print. Then the skirt would be layers of tulle with snippets of other tulle going from darker to lighter up the full skirt. There is also a victorian style drape across the top of the skirt, gathered in the back with huge tulle gathered flowers. Remember, this is an art peice.

My con list is a mile long: not enough time, will have to push back the hunting patterns, don't have the money to buy the materials needed, too much on my plate right now (Daisy scouts, Arbonne, etc.), and on and on and on.

The pro list is just this: It's FAC MOD. Really, what kind of nut would pass that up?

Lest you think the cobbler's kids are shod...

I never do our mending. I put it in a box under the sewing cabinet and think I'll get to it when I get a break in my schedule. My "schedule" being the few hours of sewing time I eek out between every other blooming thing going on while trying to raise 3 kids under the age of 8 and keeping our domain from being declared a natural disaster area. So I just walk around telling people I make couture bridal gowns hoping they don't look down and see that my pants legs are 2 inches too long. Here's something I wrote recently about said pants and thought it would be good to list here as well:

"ON BENDED (RIGHT) KNEE I COME"

These are the right knees of my jeans. Only the right, never the left. You figure it out, I've got too many fish to fry to contemplate the deeper meaning of one-sided holey britches. (Quite frankly, I've had enough of "one-sided holy" anything to last a lifetime.) I have 2 more pair in the same condition that would have made this picture, I'm sure, more compelling, but they went AWOL for the photo shoot. Swallowed up in the belly of the house monster (you know you have one, too) there to live until it sees something so vile and disgusting it will regurgitate them in a most inexplicable place. I expect that to be by the end of the week based on the condition of my kitchen counter as we speak.

I apparently spend quite of bit of time on my hands and knees. Make no assumptions about my piety, as I certainly make no assumptions about yours (and, I might add, love you just the same). It's more likely from washing the kitchen floor with 409 and a rag as yet another incident of "oops, sorry mommy, I may or may not have just placed an entire gallon of orange juice somewhere other than my 8 ounce Dora cup" is going to make my socks stick to the floor and I'll be stuck in the kitchen forever (which is my second worst nightmare) if I don't get this cleaned up. I would buy more jeans, but the size on the tag needed to adequately cover my back porch frightens me almost as much as the house monster.

New pics of Arika!

I just love to see great pics of my brides! These just came from Arika this week and look really awesome. I've got them together in a photo collage, but can't figure out how to post it here. They'll be up on the new webpage in a couple of weeks, I'll link to it when it's up.

Picture this

**Update** you can see better pics of Brooke here


I'm having trouble getting my clients to give me their pictures. Does this happen to other people? It's just frustrating to need a picture of the client actually in the dress in order to get a good quality photo for my portfolio and not be able to get that. They all say they will get it to me as soon as possible. ....Then I get nothing. I'm going to start charging a picture deposit included with the initial deposit. Fully refundable when I get the pictures. I'll let you know how that goes. I'll be ready to go live with my new webpage (online business card) in about 3 weeks and REALLY need my pictures. We'll see what I get.

On to better things.

My garment is up on the American Sewing Guild site. I'm the 3rd and 4th pictures on the top line.

I finished Brooke's dress:

In the end, I think 2 things bother me about this dress (and by the way, please tell me I'm not the only person who says there is something wrong with every single thing I've ever made).

1st) I think the seams in the self could have stood to have been opened just 1/8th on each seam. The stress around the waist is not from ill fit. I'm pretty certain it's from the outer fabric just not being big enough to stretch around the foundation.

2nd) I used coutil for the foundation. I really thing in hind sight that it's just a bit too heavy handed for this satin. Brooke was on a very tight budget and ended up using the Casa satin from Joann's. I think it's just a bit too thin to sustain coutil underneath.

3rd) (yeah, I know, I said two things....) The puckering over the butt area happened because Brooke ended up wanting a mermaid style dress, when originally it started out as a traditional shape, much fuller over the hips. I would have planned the inner workings differently if I had fully understood what she was looking for (she wasn't being fussy or anything, she just saw how she wanted it different after she has seen the dress on herself).

Other than that, I've been doing alterations lately. I DON'T DO ALTERATIONS. Except...people I know keep asking me if I can do just this one thing.....and I really need the cash.

I start on my hunting wear line pattern work next week. (it's not my line, I've just been hired to do the patternwork). I'm really ready to move on to something other than ripping out seams. Did I ever tell you that I don't do alterations?