Digital Print Fabrics

The Phoenix Art Museum always has some sort of wonderful clothing/fabric exhibit at the Ellman Fashion Design Gallery and when I was there in March the exhibit featured digital print fabrics.

 

This gown was by Alexander McQueen.

                                                       

  Pieces of the garment printed on fabric before assembly (on right). 

 

 

My favorite garment was a very simple long dress (unfortunately I didn't get a photo) featuring images from a recent book by designer Charlotte Moss entitled  Charlotte Moss:  A Visual Life.  She took images from her new book and had them printed on fabric by Spoonflower and then had a dress made from the fabric to wear to her book signing - brilliant idea!

(www.spoonflowerfabric.com -- a website

 where you can design your own custom fabric and print only what you need)

Wow - who matched this print?

As a garment sewer I was amazed to find that this garment, by designer Trina Turk, was not only allowed out of the factory, but was featured in the March 2013 Saks Fifth Avenue March Fashion Catalog.  So much for quality control.  For $388 I would expect more.

Indian Textiles

 

In July of this year I attended a presentation at the River Arts Gallery in Prairie du Sac, WI.  Two local women had recently traveled in India and they were sharing their textile purchases in a talk and slide presentation.  Mary Dickey and Annette Mahler, along with Marion Nelson (founder of Global View, a wonderful gallery and shop in Spring Green, WI) traveled to Gujarat and Rajasthan and shared their finds with us.

 

The garment I made was inspired by their talk.  Unable to find any indian block print fabric yardage, I ended up at SERRV, a wonderful shop on Monroe Street in Madison, where I purchased a beautiful blue and white block print tablecloth.  By carefully piecing and cutting I ended up with the garment show above - thanks to a great Indygo Junction pattern (Tribeca Tunic IJ797).  I did add about 7" to the length of the pattern.

 

 

Decades of Style

 I haven't sewn for myself in ages, but decided to try the Decades of Style #2001 Tulip Kimono after seeing a couple versions done by members of my sewing group.  It went together quite easily and I'm pleased with the results.  I used some fabric from Canvasbacks and ended up using 2 layers of the fabric to give it more body. 

Fabrics From China

 I’m not a big fan of commissioned work, but when you share a kindred vision with someone, they have beautiful fabrics for you to work with and they trust your artistic eye, it’s well worth the effort.

I recently spent 14 plus hours working on an indigo fabric kimono – starting from copying the pattern from a purchased garment, piecing together 5 incredible fabrics and then putting it all together.  At the end I got to embellish it with buttons from the client’s incredible collection of vintage, carved mother -of-pearl buttons – what fun!

The client wanted to feature one of the firmer printed fabrics with a dark blue section of printed Chinese characters  in white, so I used it for a set of matching patch pockets on the front.  The firmer fabrics were used in places where they could help structure the garment (i.e., front band, sleeve bands).  I used a double layer of the thiner shibori fabric on the back, utilizing a diagonal printed motif on the shoulder.  This gave weight to uphold the structure of the garment and also provided a design feature which was highlighted with stacked mother-of-pearl buttons.

I made a closure consisting of 2 buttons and a loop which can be used to keep the garment together at the top or works just as well as a decorative element.

She LOVED the garment – enough said!

Happy Holidays!

Need a BIG tote to carry your stuff around this winter?  Check out the polar bear tote - cute from the front and the back!

My new favorite notion - flower head pins

These flower head pins are fantastic!   I use alot of pins in my work, and these pins are great - 2" long so you can pin through layers of  bulky fabrics.  You can also iron over them as they will not melt and won't get in your way since the heads are flat.  Can't get enough of these!