Couture Embroidery

In the past two months, I've had two couture projects, going simultaneously.  I had started on the condom couture project for Project Inform's Evening of Hope fundraiser (more on that later) and had the muslin and most of the pattern finished before a new job came in that was supposed to take two weeks at most to complete but ended up taking more than three weeks to finish.  A designer hired me to do couture embroidery on lace for a mother of the bride dress she had designed.  The original plan had been to order the lace already embroidered, from a factory in France.  Unfortunately, by the time the lace was ordered, it was August when factories in France close for a month's vacation.  So the lace arrived locally, un-embellished.  This constituted a "fashion emergency" to get the lace embroidered in time for the wedding on October 22.  All I had were some photos of the original embroidered lace sample and the blank lace.  There were two garments to be embroidered, a corset and a lace bolero to wear over the corset.  Since the lace was very expensive and fragile, I stretched out tulle on my embroidery frames and then basted the lace on top of the tulle and embroidered through both layers.  Since the tulle was very lightweight, it's nearly invisible once the garment was constructed.

This is the lace bolero before I took it apart to embroider it.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a photo of the garment once it was reconstructed after embroidery and my relationship with the designer has since deteriorated (more on that another day).

These are the two sleeves which wrap around and become the front of the bodice.

 

This is the embroidered corset basted together.

I think it turned out beautifully.  I'm just disappointed that I wont have pictures of the finished garments.  That's not unusual when you do this type of work and someone else is responsible for the construction.  It's also disappointing that I don't credit for all this work (over 150 hours!) because the designer told the client that she was having the embroidery work done in New York.  Apparently she thought the client would be more impressed with that.

Vintage everything

Following five weeks straight of working without a day off, my family and I hopped a plane to the midwest to visit family and hubby's alma mater.  While there, hubby dragged us to what I was sure, would be the second most boring three hours of my life visiting the Sindelar Tool Museum in Edwardsburg, Michigan.  (The second after the 10 hours we spent at Musee de l'Armee in Paris while on our honeymoon.  Ok it wasn't really 10 hours, it just felt like it.)

I was pleasantly surprised by the Sindelar Tool Museum.  Hubby wanted to go because he collects hand tools for woodworking.  Apparently, this is a world famous tool museum.  You wouldn't know it from the outside.  It seemed to be just another industrial building, next to the train tracks, in a tiny town, literally so small, you would miss it if you blinked while driving through.  I expected to see  maybe a hundred or so tools but not much else. Instead, disguised in the boring looking industrial building, is literally one of the world's most important collections of hand tools.  There were tools dating from the Stone Age to around the 1930s or 40's.  Some of the tools are antiques dating back to ancient Egypt and are the only one of their kind anywhere on earth.  Mingled in with the tools are all sorts of fascinating other items like these shoes which were from somewhere in Northern Europe and were used to husk chestnuts.

He seems to just collect whatever catches his eye which could be an old radio control boat made by the chief carpenter for the Queen Mary, or this pair of clogs. I didn't get a chance to ask what these shoes were used for.  I just loved that they reminded me of Japanese Geta sandals but have a cool shape on the upper shoe too.








Antique Stirrups:








A small collection of irons


Vintage hats


Finally, I was very interested in this armour from a Mongolian tribe made of some type of leather.  the little scales on the bottom were individually laced together before being attached to the

I think if you're going to drive from New York to LA or vice versa, this is one of those places you should go out of your way to see if you have any interest in the history of tools.  It becomes overwhelming after a while when you start to realize how important everything is and how old some of it is.  The owner travels the world collecting all sorts of stuff.  Some of it goes into the museum and some is sold to fund future purchases.  It made me want to start collecting antique sewing implements.  So far, I have two pairs of ginormous shears used to cut heavyweight fabric for military uniforms.  

Dutch Fashion Academy video

I found this gorgeous video on Trendland (my current favorite blog) that compiles a variety of work from graduate designers at the Dutch Fashion Academy.

I've always hated when fashion photographers choose to shoot their subject in poor lighting, blurry focus or style the whole shoot in such a way that it's next to impossible to see the clothes.  While I love creative photo shoots and am frequently amazed at the way a fashion magazine can create an entire story from the fashions of twelve different designers, I get irritated when the story of the photoshoot becomes more important than the clothes.  This video does exactly the opposite.  The models, become  surreal, amorphous, unrecognizable blobs while the clothes are very clearly and beautifully photographed to show the incredible details of each look.  Truly beautiful work here, both in the fashions and the way the video was created.

ModeBelofte
 2011