Custom Made - Hand Printed Dress

Each year in the spring the Fort Wayne Museum of Art hosts an annual fundraiser called the ARTrageous Gala.  This year they asked if I would be willing to be a part of the even by auctioning off my time for a custom made cocktail dress that night in March.  The FWMoA has helped me so much through hosting the regional Scholastic competition throughout the years that of course I said yes!  It was such pleasure and honor that they even thought of me, and I was so glad to be a part of it that night.  

For the custom dress - I first drafted the pattern using the woman's measurements.  After the first pattern was drafted I made a mock up dress to make sure the fit was correct.  I had to make some small adjustments in the shoulders, but other than that the fit was fine.  Once the adjustments were made to the pattern I started the construction on the real dress.   I wanted to keep the design of the actual dress pretty simple, because there's so much work that went into the print.  The pattern on the fabric was all hand drawn using fine point Sharpies.  I lost track of how much time went into the doodling, but I'm sure it was over 15 hours of just doodling.

And to answer the question that I know many of you are probably thinking - yes the dress is for the most part water resistant.  I did a test with water and it was fine as long as there was no aggressive scrubbing (when I did scrub it just faded a little).  Since the dress is made from linen it will have to be dry cleaned anyway, so fading should not be a problem.

The dress is fully lined with an invisible zipper in the back of the dress.  There is a placket of hand covered buttons over the zipper to create a little vintage element - but without actually having up button up the whole dress.   

All photos taken by myself

There was a slight bidding war that night and I was asked in the middle of it if I could make two custom dresses instead of one.  The other dress is incredibly detailed so it's taking more time than I initially thought, but I'm planning on finishing it before I leave for school which is in 3 weeks now.  If I go by the plan, photos of that dress should be up soon!  

In non-sewing news - my sister was home visiting last week and it was so incredible to see her again!  It was a lot of fun and we took a few photo shoots, which I'm hoping to post soon.  In the mean time, here are some of our instagram pictures from the week. 

Ruth's Instagram.  My instagram. 

I hope your August has been nothing but spectacular so far!  I'm hoping to finish a few more posts before I go to Savannah, so more should be up soon! 

My Inspiration Journal

Old hardcover books are one of my favorite things.  Not only are they cool looking, but I love to hollow them out and use them as journals.  Sometimes I don't even hollow them out (like in this one), but I just start adding pictures straight to the pages.  Sometimes I feel like I forget the inspiring images that I have saved to a folder on my computer.  Believe me - I have folders and folders of saved inspiration photos, but there's something special about having a book to flip through.  Here are a few of the pages from this year's journal.

This journal is now full, but I just made a new writing journal from an old book the other day.  I'm starting to get into writing a lot more in journals, instead of pictures.  I found an old diary I kept when I was in the 3rd grade.  Sometimes I forget how much I've changed, and it's such a cool reminder to look back and read some of the things that I've written in the past.  

  My new journal looks exactly like the 2nd to last picture in this post - only that's going to be the style of the whole journal.  I recommend making one yourself!  All you have to do is find an old hardcover book, take a glue stick and paste a new piece of paper over the words - then write!  It's always so satisfying when a journal is completely filled.  You might even remember this inspiration journal I made and wrote about a couple years back.

If you're able to find time to keep a journal I highly recommend it!

Gypsy Travelor

These are my last set of photos taken while in California.   I think I've said this before, but sunset is always my favorite time of day, and I've never seen a sunset as beautiful as it was in California!  

There was such a difference between the sunset overlooking the bay and the sunset overlooking the beach.  There's a desert area on the bay side with walking paths, which was incredibly still and quiet.  Like everything was just frozen in time.  I almost feel like that spot was created just for me to find and capture the time as the light went from an overwhelming golden to a still dark. 

Outfit:  

 High Waisted Plaid Shorts:  DIY pants made into shorts

 Sandals:  Aldo

 Sunglasses:  H&M

Necklace:  DIY made from a drawer knob. 

 Headband:  DIY made from scrap fabric.

The sunset on the beach was a completely different story.  The beach was loud as the waves came towards you.  The white caps looked like mini charging horses that eventually fade into the overhead sun that was being reflected on the flat sandy shores.  Right as the sun would come down there was such a beautiful sense of peace, and I didn't want to move, because I felt like it would ruin the moment.

It's saddening that these are the last pictures I took while in California.  I want to go back so badly, but I think it might be a while longer yet.  I guess that just makes thinking about it even more special.  What's your favorite place that you've ever been to?  I love hearing stories of travel, because I dream of traveling all over one day.

I hope your July has been lovely and full of fantastic memories! 

Art Deco Style Swimsuit

This swimsuit has been a long post in waiting.  I made it way back last summer, and I just now got around photographing it.  I took the swimsuit with me to California, and decided to do a last minute photo shoot the day that I had to leave.  I was really glad that I made time for it, because there aren't too many sweet looking pools like this where I live - at least none with palm trees. 

I wanted to recreate this amazing Abaete swimsuit that I saw while reading Vogue once.  I made a few slight adjustments, but they're pretty small, and still hold pretty true to the design that I saw. 

As for the construction, this is probably the most in-depth garment that I've ever made.  So much time went into hand sewing, and making sure that all of the design details, and the fit was correct.  For the fabric, I used a stretch linen (for those of you seamstresses who are wondering, the linen has held up great in water!  There's no shrinking at all.), and cream jersey lining on the inside.  I drafted the pattern using my own measurements, except for the bottom portion.  I cut up an old pair of well fitted underwear to use as my base pattern for the bottoms.   

There's boning in the bodice, and all of the white lines are bias tape that was top stitched onto outside of the suit. The bias tape was all hand pressed and made from an old, twill, satin skirt that I had.  The halter straps are made from that same fabric as well.

The lining took the longest to work on.  I only had scraps of jersey from other projects that I had worked on.  At the time I didn't feel like going to buy more, so I just used what I had, and pieced the lining together from scraps.  Although looking back I wish that I would have waited to buy more fabric, because so much time went into hand sewing the inside!  Because I only had small pieces of jersey, all of the seams had to be hand sewn down using a whip stitch to keep from bunching.  I also hand sewed ribbon, and bias tape to cover some of the seams as well (as you can see from the zipper and waist area).  Overall around 40 hours went into sewing this swimsuit. 

All photos taken by myself

I have one more shoot from California coming up and then I'm back to posting Indiana photos.  I'm working on a fun short video right now which I'm really excited about and can't wait to share.  

More to come later this week, and I hope you're all enjoying your summer!