That was fun! I never expected so many people would bring that much dresses, skirts, blouses and trousers to swap. And not only ladies, even the guys joined in. Thank you so much everybody, it was a great birthday party! Eelke took some shots, of which I will show a selection after the jump. The full collection can be viewed at Eelke’s flickr page here. Read the rest of this entry ?
I’m sorry I’ve been a bit quiet lately. My excuse is that with my sewing skills improving, the designs in my head get more and more complex too. Or at least more labour intensive. The fabric I work with for this blouse is a very thin satin viscose. I tried sewing it on my regular straight stitch machine with a special micro-needle, but the fabric just damages and I have to sew the whole blouse by hand.. which takes forever as you can imagine. Yesterday I finished the neckline, and I found the perfect button for it: one of the glass buttons I inherited from my grandma. I’ve never known her, but apparently she was a great craftress as well.
In the mean time I’m busy with the preperation of next week’s celebration of this blog’s one year anniversary. To share the fun, and to raise a bit of money so I can continue doing this, I decided to sell a few dresses on etsy. Have a look, and maybe one on my dresses can be yours!
It’s almost a year since I’ve started the challenge to create my own wardrobe and written the very first post of The Dress I Made. I’ve learned a lot from sewing all these clothes, and without this self-induced incentive of writing a blog I would never have started on a wintercoat for example. With making my own skirts, dresses and trousers, I learned about quality too. About the luxury feel of a dress that fits perfectly and about the secret pleasure of a blouse with hidden french seams. Now that I’ve spent endless hours handstitching hems to attach them invisibly, I recognize (and value) real craftmanship even more.
One of the reasons to start this project was the feeling that something’s wrong in fashion industry: fast turn-over rates, horrible working conditions and a total lack of respect for our resources. Recently I’ve visited a textile recycling innovation centre, where they told me that 30% (!!) of all clothes and textile goods produced are destroyed without ever being worn or used. Apparently in food industry figures are even worse, but still this is an insanely high percentage of waste, isn’t it? When I started this challenge I thought that I would really miss shopping, but that’s not the case. My love for quality has grown, and combined with a loss of appetite for mass-produced goods I’ve now got and even more expensive taste than before. And less money.. But that’s a side note, I just wanted to explain why I totally admire the work of Monique van Heist, who has the guts to not design a whole new collection every season. And the work of the ladies from I-did slow fashion, who make a continuously evolving collection with the help of ladies from their neighbourhood.
The pictures show a top I’ve been working on for a few evenings in a row now. I’ve explained earlier how I’m fascinated by 3D structures and textures in textile, and this is another example. I hope the result will be just as pretty as the image in my head, and so far it looks promising.
PS To celebrate the 1-year anniversary I invite you all to a ‘swap the clothes that you’ve hardly worn’-party the 25th of May in Hoop Creatief warenhuis in The Hague, from 7 to 10 pm. More info will follow!
If you have looked at the yin yang bag tutorial, you might have noticed the big eyelets that I used to lead the holding strap through. These are the biggest you can still hammer in by hand, without using a real press. Since I’ve had a few questions concerning where to buy them and how to add them to your piece of work, I decided to write a short tutorial about them. Read the rest of this entry ?
.. I will show new pictures! Last friday at sunset Eelke and I finally did a photoshoot of the latest items I’ve made. Eelke wrote a really nice ‘making of’ story on his blog. The text is originally in Dutch, but pictures speak all languages don’t they?
Update: Google knows more or less how to translate, so if you want to read the story in english click here.
Here’s a little sneak preview of a project I’m currently working on. Can you guess what it will be? In about a week both my photographers will be back from holiday, so just a few more days of patience before I’ll have new photo’s to show. While I was working on this new piece (no, not saying anything), I took pictures to show how smocking works and wrote a step-by-step instruction. Read the rest of this entry ?
