Daryl's Blog

Here are the images of the second style of dress I am contemplating for the Frosted Florals Rayon fabric.   Again, I made up the dress in a fabric on my shelf to see if I liked it on me.  This one is a soft gather over one shoulder, with pleating at the waist, which is beautiful with the stripes in the woven fabric.  This garment fits better on the fabric, and I like that the division line is closer to the waist instead of up under the bust, which means I’ll have an easier time matching the horizontal color bands at the side seams.  My only hesitation with this style, is when the bodice is gathered into the one shouldered look, it throws the vertical lines of the stripe visually off balanced, and I’m not sure I will like that.  I have to play with it more…  This style will use up more of the fabric, and that is a good thing.

Feel free to comment if you have an opinion one way or another on the choice of styles.  To comment, click on the title of this post, and a comments dialogue box will open up for viewing.  You do not have to be registered to leave a comment. (Which is one of the reasons I switched to WordPress for my blogging page.)

FYI, the fabric on the dress form is actually draped and pinned to simulate the look of the finished pattern.  I do this a lot.  There is nothing cut from the yardage, and nothing sewn or refined.  It helps to get a general idea of where color areas might be placed.  I threw a piece of hem tape around the middle to give an idea of the waist placement.

I laid out this project back in December, you can reread the project in the archives.  The deadline for submission for the fashion show at the Surface Design Association’s Conference, Off the Grid in Kansas City, MO May28-May31, 2009 is coming up fast.  I believe it is Feb 1, 2009.  http://www.surfacedesign.org Looking back over the projects I’ve outlined so far, I want to work on the ones that most fit the fashion show theme for a surface design conference, rather than a handweaver’s conference.  Project one, the frosted florals fabric involves hand dyed warps and some textural weaving in the structure choice, and I think would be dynamic on the runway and in photographs.  So for now I’ll concentrate on that one.  I do my best work, or rather my most productive output under deadlines…

I have two possibilities for this project.  The December 2008 Burda had some gorgeous dresses involving draping and pleating, two would be effective with this slinky rayon fabric, and the unbroken length of the dyed fabric down the front would be stunning.  So I’ve done a sketch, and made the pattern up into an actual dress to really see which I like on my body, and then I’ve done a preliminary layout for each of the two designs I’m contemplating.  The styling may be wonderful, but if the patterns don’t fit on the narrow fabric, no sense pursuing it.

This is the first choice, and I love the soft pleating and drape which really shows off the fabric striping.  The pattern is a bit wider than the fabric, but not by much, and I can always do my famous cheat, where I find a narrow piece of the fabric on the selvedge, that continues the coloration of the area where the fabric is missing, and butt the two selvedges together, making just that area wide enough for the pattern piece.  I do it all the time, and it is really invisible, I will hand stitch, or machine stitch with a very very narrow zig zag, catching the two selvedges.

I’ll follow up with the second choice tomorrow.  Stay tuned…

Project 5 is a bolt of fabric I had sitting on the loom for a long time.  It wasn’t really exciting me, after all the dyed warps I’d been doing over the previous year, it was sort of ordinary, yet the subtle coloring when you looked closely at the fabric was exquisite.  The fabric will work well for a more classic coat, mid weight, and I can bulk it up with an interlining.

This fabric, called Arctic Sky, was based on a forecast from Handwoven Magazine I did for the Jan/Feb 2007 issue of Handwoven Magazine.  I loved the rich blues into plums, spiced up with the new lime green, or rather new at the time, lime green has become the new neutral.  It is a fantastic color for a handweaver to use intermittently within a fabric.

I originally set this warp up on my 8 shaft, not because it needed to be, but when I have sticky wool warps, I find that by spreading them over eight shafts instead of four, I get less skipped sticky warp issues.

I have about 6 yards of 21″ wide fabric, not a huge amount, but enough I think for a trench type coat, and I have a beautiful silk Sari from my husband’s gift stash, in a rich green, that might work with the fabric.  I’m big on using what I already have.  And I have this odd little sash/narrow scarf that I felted with a friend, in that fabulous lime green color.  I can see using the natural edge of the felt as a narrow accent down the edge of a band or belt.  It is a strong color, so just an accent would be appropriate.  Almost like a piping.   I could really use a good spring trench coat.

Meanwhile, Brianna is making slow steady progress on the placemat exchange warp.  She had the chain wound by early evening last night, and started on sleying the reed.  She finished putting the warp chain into the reed before she went to bed last night, and when she got home from work today, she started threading the overshot pattern. She just called over to say she was half finished.  The fact that she seems to really enjoy warping the loom just makes my heart sing!  Yippee!

I was born the end of May, which would make me a Gemini.  That means there is two of me, and though it sounds great in theory, instead of working as a team, the two of me are at constant battle with ourselves.  My techie husband spent all yesterday, unbeknownst to me, figuring out a blog site that would integrate with my existing webserver.  Apparently eBlogger doesn’t.  So when he announced first thing this morning that he had it all laid out and I should check it out, I panicked.  My one half was instantly annoyed that I would have to relearn something I’ve just started, figure out how to redirect everyone to a different blog site, and was that even the wisest thing to do, and the other half of my two selves thought it made a lot of sense, to work directly through my own server, and I’d have more flexibility with add-ons and viewer comments, etc.   And since I’ve only just started the blog, now would make the most sense.  Still…

So, for now, until I have the new blogging site figured out, and apparently I can bring in the posts from the old one for continuity, I’ll blog duplicate postings.

My new Blog Site is www.weaversew.com/wordblog