Finished Garments

I finished the piece I have been working diligently on for the Altered Couture Wedding Challenge. The due date is March 15th and I was able to finish the dress this morning and mail it off USPS Priority mail so it should arrive in time. Whew!! Now to wait patiently for them to go through all the entries and decide who gets accepted. I think it could take months and sometimes that's hard for people (like me) who get impatient and anxiously excited to know. I'm just like a little kid who wants to know what's in the wrapped box?! It's that same feeling.

I'm not going to reveal any of the dress since there is a possibility of getting published and I want it to be a surprise in the magazine. I mean that is the point. I guess it seems like I am contradicting myself since I both love surprises and at the same time can hardly stand to be patient to find things out.

I also finished this garment I've been working on for a while. Let me explain. I often start a piece by hanging it up and looking at it from time to time. I pin different fabrics, or vintage pieces, trims, and laces to decided where I want to go with it. I work as I go so sometimes it takes a while to get a piece completed. I work on more than one garment at a time so I've always got projects going in different stages.

The back of this garment has a velvet piece that was designed by Marian Clayden. I attended a tea in her honor in 2008 where remnants of her designed velvet pieces were for sale and I purchased a few of these along with some of her shibori fabrics. Marian is wheelchair bound by her illness now and I have not heard a word about her since I attended that tea which was fabulous! A whole exhibit of her lifetime works of art in the garment and fabric design world.

I always thought of her velvets as being "burn out or devore" but in fact she created the designs and the velvet was woven with them and not the reverse. With devore (in a nutshell), the velvet is woven and then the design is "burned" into the fabric by screening or painting a chemical onto the velvet fibers in the design you want and the chemical causes the rayon velvet to pull away from the silk backing.

This is the finished piece:







But it started this way:





My goal now is to clean up my space a bit, begin gathering materials to make kits for Create in May, and do what I can to create more garments, dyed ribbons, flower pins, etc. before I leave on April 6 for a trip to New Zealand! My hubby and I will be gone until April 28th visiting friends there and exploring a bit on our own. I've never been and am looking forward to this trip!

I'll be participating in a May Day show On April 30th and May 1st and sincerely hope I will not be jet lagged and spaced out for the show. I'll be posting more about that show in a week or two.