Mod Wedding Dress

I also did this wedding dress for a contest and I think that's my best piece so far. I love everything about it: it's simplicity, elegance, the concept behind and the craftsmanship on it.

If the shape clearly remind of the mod/60's, the transparency give it a modern edge.

The picture above is my dream photo shoot. I just childishly played with the picture from the school end of the year fashion show on Photoshop (ok, I must admit it's not Photoshop but Gimp... it's freeware little brother). This was my first try at altering a picture so please be kind.
And for the photoshoot to be perfect, I would love some of those white lines to come in front of the model, and maybe have one in sone kind of plastic to be crushed by the model hands in front of her face. But ok, let's stop dreaming and just go back to the dress.

You can see it on the catwalk of the contest I made it for:

If I didn't win anything, I was so pleased to see both of my wedding dresses opening the show. That was a sight I won't forget.

Do you recognize my other wedding dress? If not, you can see it here.

Let's now talk a bit about the concept and construction.
This dress was actually my first take at my "point of view" concept. That exact same concept I'm now working on full time to do my first collection.
I wanted the lines to be absolutely parallels and equal in width.  By absolutely I mean that I wanted them to be seen that way from the unreachable but so widely acknowledged infinity point. I feel I might have lost you right here. So a more simple way of seeing it would be to say that I wanted this dress to prefectly disapeare behind some parallels white line like the one in the first picture.

But where it becomes tricky is that the body has curves. Therefore, to look parallel and the same size, the stripes have to NOT be the same size and parallel.
To achieve that effect, I had to mark my lines directly on the final shape. I did a "muslin" (I used paper on the skirt part for the stiffness and to cut some steps) and then used a laser pen parallel to the floor to mark the lines:

I know it doesn't look much like sewing and people at school were just stoping by looking at me with the "what the heck is she doing" kind of look.

This is the first time I'm fully happy with something I made.  And that's because the craftsmanship on that one is really good. I've never sewed so nicely. This dress is actually more of couture garment when it comes to the finishing: self-lined white bands with a lot  of hand sewing, french seams, covered bones on the sides.

And I even got the Best of Show Award at school for it. Isn't that amazing?
Well, I think you got it: I love it!

Could you imagine yourself wearing it? For your wedding or a fancy event? Daytime or night time?
To what event can you imagine yourself wearing it?

Have a wonderful Monday.

New school year = New title design

With the school year starting, I want some changes here. So today, I designed a new title banner. I know it's a small change, but it make it more personal... and more appropriate. I loved the previous picture:

But birch bark was probably not the most appropriate picture for a sewing blog. The new one is a detail of one of the garment I made:

Do you remember my up-cycled dress made last year? The banner is a close up of the plastic bolero:

 

I also want to express a special thank to my 10 followers and all the people reading me.

Have a wonderful Sunday afternoon!

Wet felting to make hats

Making felt hats it THE reason that made me take the millinery class again.

Wet felting is a long and tiring process but, in my opinion, the wonderful feeling of the wool and to see it change under your eyes to become a fabric make it worse it.
To give you an idea of the work required to make felt I took some pictures during the process of my 1st attemp at making wool.
Here are the main supplies I used:

You can see the grey merino wool in the middle. Merino is know to be the easiest to felt. Since is was already quite long and tiring (in a work-out way), I must admit being shy over try other fibers.
You can see here some of the work involve in felt-making:

The pictures are mostly from the beginning of the process as I was way to busy during the rolling/throwing parts to even think about taking pictures! And yes, the second pair of hands are my teachers'.

At first, I did block this hat to be a cloche. But I later changed it for what you can see in this picture:

Yes, I speaking about the light grey hat at in the back. This is the only picture blocked I have cause I still haven't finish it. I blocked so many hat that semester that I will most likely not be done finishing them before next summer...

I also blocked the 3 other hats in the picture, but I can not brag as much about them as I simply bought the felt instead of making it!

I have to admit I loved blocking felt even more than sinamay.