Romanesca

So I know this has nothing to do with anything else here, but I have to include this picture.
This is the craziest vegetable EVER!! It is fractals in a vegetable! If Mandelbrot genetically engineered a vegetable this is what it would look like. Its like watching a fractals special on PBS in your fridge!

Nicole's dress started out too long so I added channels and cording so it could be drawn up like draperies. I love the effect! I definitely will be using this idea again in future projects.

sheepdog coat

This is the sheepdog as vicious rug. I have been wanting to gut this thing for months and turn it into a hoody. it isn't quite hoodified yet but it has been gutted. It makes the cutest hood with a tongue hanging over the side of the wearers face and it makes a pretty good womens large jacket.

Swimming with the Fishies

So I found some old files today with a fish graphic I made in Illustrator last year. The first image is the black and white file I originally created, I copied the large one, scaled it down and reflected it to make a small school of angelfish.

The second image is the fish print that I printed directly on to an iridescent green/blue fabric

The third image is a long underbust corset I made with the printed fabric. The blue overlays are a water-patterned transparent plastic sheeting.

The Wedding dress that made it all better.....

Every time I sew a wedding dress I swear it will be the last one. I usually windup making slave wages in the end and am frustrated beyond belief with brides that aren't totally clear on what they want.

This one was fairly easy to make and Miranda was great to work with. She brought me the sad first attempt at a dress that someone else had tried to make.

Silk peu de soi does not make a good underlining those of you that are wondering. The first seamstress had used fusible interfacing on the silk for the foundation. The foundation was too small to fit the bride, although the outer dress zipped up just fine over the foundation. Ugh what a mess! Luckily the bride had purchased more than enough silk and I had a go at it - It took about 30 hours and worked a bit better with a cotton twill underlining and some light boning. She also wanted an outerskirt of flowered fabric which turned out so much better than I thought it would. I made it detachable and interlined it with silk organza.

Sunhat

This one is a pretty sunhat, another Lynn McMasters pattern. I wore it home the day I finished it and it was a bit windy in the city. The wind picked it up off my head and it turned into a really sweet frisbee. I got it home and covered it in a few yards of tulle which made it a bit less aerodynamic. It truly is an awesome sunhat - very dramatic and it offers shade all the way down to the waist. I wore it on a rare sunny day to Dolores park and got some great compliments. Mysterious is my middle name when I wear this hat......

This is a miniature version of a Lynn McMasters hat pattern. She makes the most amazingly detailed instructions for the patterns which include drawings and photos. I took her pattern for a Wellington hat and reduced it, made it of black buckram covered in lace and attached an adjustable plastic see-through strap to it so it stays on your head and its not terribly noticeable. Very saucy. The only drawback of the hat making experimentation was the amount of blood I lost through my fingertips. If I had one of those cool CSI flashlights that makes blood glow, the inside of this hat would lite up like christmas.

Snakeskin Pants

John wearing a pair of fabulous snakeskin brocade pants I made for him a couple of weeks ago