Convergence Challenge Project

The Fashion Show

What a great day! We concluded the three day workshop in Garment Construction Techniques, with a seminar in Closures, starting the morning with Bound Buttonholes, and then moving into Triangular Bound Buttonholes. When the students took a break to sample, I saw some really lovely triangular buttonholes coming from their sewing machines. We went on to discuss many ways to close a garment. Lots of ideas, some simple, some fun, no more excuses for outerwear with no closure!

I really loved this group! There was a huge range of skill levels in the class, some felt like they were beginners, and others were very skilled, needing some inspiration, there was even an experienced educator looking for ways to teach these kinds of techniques. I hope all got something from the class, and I’m looking forward to the weekend seminars.

After I packed up and brought my two 70 pound suitcases over to the dorm room, I went over to the fashion show rehearsal. I wasn’t actually participating in this show, but I wanted to preview the garments back stage, as I will be the judge.

As it turns out, because of the scheduling, I will have to actually judge the fashion show garments after the fashion show takes place. So I requested the privilege of actually judging the fashion show garments during the fashion show.

OK, so here is the problem. This is a pet peeve of mine. I have judged many many fashion shows over the years, and judging a fashion show, usually means, sitting in a room, with the garments, each one laid out in front of me, like a dead carcass on the table. See, I am looking at a piece of fabric, more often than not handwoven, sewn into a garment, laying on the table in front of me. I have nothing to judge the garment on but technique, suitability of weave structure, and originality of design. That isn’t really the problem, the problem is, I’m only seeing a very small piece of what this garment is about. A garment is designed to be worn, to be viewed on a body. A real body. A post menopausal female, with graying hair, and a wonderful outlook on life. I never get to see that part of the equation, who the garment was designed for, how does it fit them, does it wear them, or do they proudly wear it? Later, after judging, I get to view the real fashion show, and 40% of the time, I want to change my comments and my judging scores, because I find that the pieces come alive when they are filled out with the person whose hands created them. I love when the maker wears their own garment.

So tonight, I had a chair, and a clipboard, and a list of the garments at my disposal, and I felt like Nina Garcia on Project Runway, judging the work as it came down the runway. Wow. I cannot say how this experience has changed the way I judge a garment. I did get to preview the garments backstage before the show, but the garments came alive as they walked across the stage, and down the runway, I was really really blown away by some of the garments that just looked like nothing on the hangers.

I couldn’t actually take pictures of the pieces, I was too busy scribbling notes! After the fashion show, dessert was served, and then, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Michigan League of Handweavers, a vintage garment retrospective fashion show took place. This was so much fun. I laughed and squealed in delight, as I recognized fashion looks from the early years of handwoven clothing. I have been weaving clothing since the 1970’s, and this represented a history I really remember. I did manage to snap a few shots, the first model out wore, what else, but a 1950’s handwoven apron!

Of course every weaver remembers the horse blanket reversible poncho from handspun yarns. And then came the 60’s cotton shift, this one had cutouts in the waist area, it even had the fringe at the hem! And then who hasn’t made a leno skirt and shawl! I loved the orange color of this set.

Millie Danielson, a long time member of MLH, moderated this retrospective of vintage works, and some of the pieces were actually hers.

This very vintage ensemble of Millie’s featuring yellow hotpants, brought the house down. The commercial decorator fringe really completed the outfit! All that was missing were the white go-go boots!

Millie also created this outrageous coat, woven with warp remnants tied into the structure with Ghiordes knots. I don’t know what year she wove it, but it was a pretty impressive piece. And the model carried the whole look off effortlessly!

The finale of the retrospective show, featured none other than our own fashion icon, Anita Mayer, who wore Ann Flora’s contemporary felted coat and hat. It was a stunning piece, and she looked fabulous in it.

I of course, wore my now infamous Frosted Florals dress. Not only did I get to sign a few autographs on page 81 of the current issue of Threads Magazine where it appeared in the Readers’ Closet pages, but the latest issue of Shuttle Spindle and Dyepot has just come out on the newstands, and there were a number of copies floating around, with my new article on the Convergence Challenge project. I’ve gotten some very kind emails so far, telling me what a wonderful piece Loretta and I created. I got to autograph a number of those issues as well. My friend Robyn Spady has two articles in that issue, and since she was teaching across the hall from me, there was a lot of autographing going on!

So, tomorrow I do the final judging for the show, and I will write all my comments and choose the winners. Stay tuned…

Big Splash!

After a day of bill paying, paperwork, printing monographs, and errands, I made myself clear my cutting table and dive into getting the next project underway.

You may recall I had pulled out the leftover handwoven Splash fabric from the Design Challenge Project I worked on all last year for the HGA Tampa Bay Convergence fashion show. The Design Challenge has been on my mind in recent days, because the latest issue of SS&D is out and the next group of designers have been selected for the 2010 Convergence Albuquerque Challenge. The yarn is gorgeous, I’m a bit jealous, because these are my colors, I sadly had to contend with a Floridian palette. And the yarn for the latest challenge is bamboo and tencel, not the fat cotton knitting yarn, we were given. So maybe I’ll just have to order me up some of this great yarn (at $100.00 a pound!) and see what I can do with it, without the pressure of the challenge hanging over me. Then again, maybe I’ll open up my dye cabinet and see what lurks there…

Anyway, my best west coast weaving buddy Robyn Spady is one of the designers, she lives in Seattle and I’m going to visit her the beginning of June. I know she will have the same trouble I had keeping everything top secret! Congratulations Robyn! What a ride it’s gonna be… (Don’t worry Sally, you’re still my best east coast weaving buddy!)

Anyway, I digress…

I had made up the dress in a brocade to make sure I liked the fit. I did some additional tweaking to the pattern pieces, and then laid out the two panels left from the original Challenge Fabric, side by side on the cutting table, so I could get a feel for how the colors would run from one panel to the other. There are two widths of cloth on the table, both with the same magenta running through the upper portion, which I’ll have banding the bustline. Though the pink was my least favorite part of the yarn and subsequent fabric, (which is why I had it leftover), it made sense to cut it out this way. I couldn’t have fit the pattern pieces any other way. As it was, I technically didn’t have enough for the center front and center back shoulders, and I didn’t even try to match them, but I was able to use my famous trick of butting selvedges together to achieve a wider width of fabric in that area. I try when designing fabric, to have the selvedge edges contain half a design motif, so when they are butted together, which happens more often than you would imagine, the pattern runs flawlessly across the garment.

I carefully cut out the pieces, cutting each pattern piece singly, using a single strand of embroidery floss for the tailor’s tacks, and then flipping the pattern pieces to get the second half. That way I could really control the grainlines and color.

When I was finished cutting out, I had the smallest pile of scraps, some of them should probably be tossed, but this little pile represents the remainder of a year’s worth of work, and a grand adventure, and I’m going to save this little pile, that started out as 10 yards of 36″ wide handwoven fabric! I know I can still use it for something else!

Now I really should go clean my dreadfully dirty house, make dinner, and read another 50 pages in my HTML manual…

The Easter Bonnet

Easter means many things to many people. Obviously there is a religious connotation here, but others view Easter as the official start of spring, flowers, color, and of course, the fashion police lifting the ban on wearing white shoes. Remember back when you couldn’t wear white shoes before Easter?

Easter meant a lot for me growing up, there was of course the religious significance, having grown up Catholic, and the secular jelly beans, dyeing of Easter Eggs, Marshmallow Peeps, which only came in yellow as I recall. (Check out the Washington Posts annual Peep Show Competition, dioramas using Marshmallow Peeps). But the best thing I remember about Easter when I was growing up, was the fashion parade. My mother was a fabulous tailor, she made the most glorious suits, and every Easter she would debut her latest creation, and my dad, who kept our family on a very tight budget, would always indulge my mom at Easter with a new bonnet! This is my most favorite photo of my childhood, my mom in a black linen suit, with her new chapeau, and matching bunny outfits for me and my younger sisters. I always felt a bit superior as the oldest since I was big enough to get the whole bunny on the front of my dress, my youngest sister only got the head.

I woke up this morning feeling a bit adrift. Largely I get like this when I am in between projects. There is the mourning period after I finish a huge undertaking, because honestly, housework and such just doesn’t pull me out of bed in the morning. Since I had a terrific week of finishing my website, the Arctic Sky jacket, my article for SS&D, and spinning wheel repair, and the Challenge Presentation, I just hadn’t had the opportunity to dive into the next big thing. So I laid in bed listening to NPR, until the BBC World Service came on, which meant it was 9am, and guilt finally got me moving. I did vacuum the bedroom after breakfast and clean up the kitchen, and I did go outside and sweep all the maple blooms off the myriad of decks we have in the back of the house. I love maple trees, but the are sooooo messy. No sooner do you get all the red gloppy blossoms swept up, but the tree starts sending down an avalanche of helicopters. The first couple are cute. After that I need a rake.

So I kept thinking about Sunday, being Easter, and my mom and her fashion parade. I’ve been looking at the leftover fabric from the fashion challenge for the last week or so, because I’ve been working on the final presentation. (I’m still waiting for one more small detail from the HGA, the original invitation had a typo in it, and they are sending me a new one, so the CD isn’t up on the eShop yet). The fabric just doesn’t scream jacket at me, and I’m getting quite a few jackets in my wardrobe, what I don’t have, is a handwoven dress. I’m not talking gown, like the one I did recently that I wore for the runway in California. I’m talking a 60’s style, slim fitting short summer dress. This fabric, which was affectionately called in earlier blogs, Project 6, was handwoven using the “Splash” yarns from the Convergence Challenge Project, and I think that’s a really appropriate name for this colorful spring fabric.

I made a great dress a couple years back, to go with the Forest Fire Jacket. You may recall the photo session I did with that. It was an orange raw silk, and I used a Vogue pattern. The dress was a princess seam style, with a round neck, and it should have fit me like a glove. But I made it more for the original photo, to fit my daughter who was a couple sizes larger than me. Now that I’ve lost the excess cancer med weight, the dress is huge on me. So the first order of the day was to get the dress to fit. I tried it on, got my daughter to pin the excess out the back, I figured rather than remake the whole dress, I could just in this case, remove the extra 5 inches or so in the back. In this case it worked. So I carefully took the zipper out, and cut away the lining, and remade the back of the dress.

I decided to remake the original pattern, cutting it to a smaller size, and taking in, in additional places to better fit my body. Rather than dive right into the Splash fabric, I chose to make the dress up first in something else, just to make sure I’ve got it right. So I found a brocade fabric I had bought to make something else, and cut out another dress with the altered pattern. And I just happen to have a black silk sari for a lining! So, the orange silk dress now fits me like a glove, and the brocade dress is cut out, and I did a quick layout of the spash fabric to see if the pattern pieces will fit. I’ll have to do a creative layout, but I think I can get everything out, with the color consistent all the way around. I think it will be a smashing dress for the summer, it won’t be done for Easter, but I have my new Arctic Sky jacket to wear. So I’m off and running again…

Here’s the score so far on the placemat exchange, Brianna 3, mom 2.

The Planets have Aligned!

For a day that started out poorly, it ended most spectacularly! I didn’t sleep well last night. I had too much partying, more alcohol than I usually consume (which is almost nothing, hence the problem) and rich food, and too much of it, and I laid awake most of the night, trying to sleep, but finally giving up and reading. (Joan Dideon’s Year of Magical Thinking). Which meant I was a wreck in the morning. And my daughter called from school to have me make a doctors appointment to have her checked for strep. So by the time I finally got up, made the appointment, drove to the HS to get her, took her to the doctor (she did not have strep, only a virus, and the doctor sent her back to school) and drove back home, it was lunch time. My plans of all I was going to accomplish were rapidly sifting through my fingers. And on top of that, a miserable cold rain made everything soggy and frigid. One of those bone chilling days where you just can’t get warm.

But I decided to try to make some headway on the new website. I only had four pages to go, and one of them was pretty critical. My schedule. I hadn’t updated the old site in awhile, and a lot needed to be entered. Once I decided on a format, I just had to look through all my files and emails to plug in as much information as I had, all the dates and contacts, and the topics I was teaching. Then to simplify the site, I linked PDF files for the prospectuses instead of all the lengthy descriptions like I had on the old site.

So I plodded along, got my son to take my daughter back to the HS tonight for jazz band, and sent him out for a Chinese Food run. And I continued to plod…

The upshot is, I FINISHED THE SITE! I can’t believe it. I’m done. I’m so proud of what I’ve done. And I put a temporary home page on the old site to direct to the new site, eventually when I’m sure everything is correct, and my husband returns from New Hampshire, I’ll wipe out the old site, and park it with the new one, so whether you go to www.weaversew.com or www.daryllancaster.com, you will end up in the same place.

Just as the last file uploaded, an email came in from Sandra Bowles, executive director of the Handweavers Guild of America, Inc. telling me that they have approved my presentation for the Challenge Project I did last year for them, and I’m OK to market the presentation on a CD, to any guild that would like to show it for a guild meeting or program. I have to say that Sandy went out of her way, doing way more than I asked, by carefully working through all 81 slides, and proofing, editing, and watching for copyright issues, in a very professional and thorough manner. I am very grateful Sandy. So, give me a few days and I’ll have the CD up on my eShop. I think I’ll offer it as both a PowerPoint and a PDF file on the same disk. If you are a member of a guild, weaving, sewing, whatever, or just plain curious, this CD presentation is intended to stand alone, without me, as an inexpensive hour and a half program, following the year long challenge presentation, where I was paired with a designer I had never met, given yarn I’d have never picked to work with, in colors that don’t appeal to me, and we had a year to come up with a runway ensemble to debut at the Convergence 2008 Tampa Bay Fashion Show. The 81 slide presentation starts with the design process, which was completely done with emails, and then the step by step sampling for the woven fabric, the design and pattern making , the cutting out and construction of the coat and dress, and the final embellishments, hand felting and beading that kept my partner Lorretta Dian Phipps up too many nights in a row. There are some great production photos, and I’m really proud of the finished ensemble and the presentation as well.

And I even got an hour off to watch the latest installment of the new HBO series, #1 Ladies Detective Agency, starring Jill Scott. (I had recorded it from Sunday night since I was driving to the airport while it was airing). It is as delightful as the series by Alexander McCall Smith, and I have to almost say, I like it even more. The gentle life in Botswana, the interesting cases that fall into the lap of Precious Ramotswe, the endearing characters, and the spectacular scenery all keep me captivated and yearning for more.

Dare I hope to get the lining done on the coat tomorrow?