Monthly Archives: November 2012

Racing Stripes

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These are some wool slacks cut like skinny jeans, with rivets and everything. The client generally wears boots, so I added some similar-weight cashmere godets in the side seams up to the knee.

I stitched some scrap fabric over the rivets so they wouldn’t poke out and wear on the ribbon or look lumpy.

I pinned this grosgrain ribbon up the side seam with a ruler inside the leg so I wouldn’t pin through more than one layer of fabric:

I matched the maroon of the stripes in the fabric and quadrupled the thread so it would show up. The grosgrain stripes made it easy to keep the stitches even–4 stripes on, 4 stripes off.

It came out looking pretty sharp:

Potunia Photoshoot

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I’ve been written up twice in a local Vietnamese fashion magazine called Potunia.

Diana Souza and Ava Carmichael came over to take some photos of my fashions and of me hanging out and looking sewy in my old studio at the Continental Gin building. I’ve posted a gallery of the photoshoot here:

http://www.nordahlia.com/?page_id=688

Christopher Robin’s Got Game

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Today I hosted Craft Day, as I do once a month, through www.meetup.com/weirdery so I finished up all the machine sewing the night before and saved all the non-machine-related finishing stuff for today. I’ve used my sewing machines during Craft Days before, but it’s always a lot of work to haul them out of my studio, it takes up a lot of space on the table, and it’s too loud to easily join in the chatting, which is the whole point of hosting a public Craft Day.

Here are all the faces drying on the catch-all table I keep swearing I’m going to straighten up:

So today was about sewing the snaps onto Eyore’s chin, rubbing glue into everyone’s eyes and smiles, and styling the angel’s and Christopher Robin’s hair. For that part, I used FrayCheck, since it had worked so well on Eyore’s mane.

I put Angel’s face over the back of a chair and a pillow to get it to stand up while I was working on it. For Chris Robin, I found a cooler option:

Now I want to make another one that I can keep!

Cat Fashion

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When I look at fashion sites or cut up old magazines, I often get ideas for some sort of pocket detail or a clever use of buttons, or just inspiration like “hey, that chiffon skirt looks great blowing in the wind . . . oh yeah, I like chiffon!” But there is also a lot of crap out there.

It just occurred to me that I have posted two complaints about fashion in fairly rapid succession. So that I don’t wind up looking like a grouch or a bully or Joan Rivers, I thought I’d go in search of some inspiring fashion.

Here is a lovely grey, double-breasted pea coat, similar to what I was envisioning for D.’s winter coat when I finally get a chance to make it–though I’m debating a Nehru or Nehru-like collar and/or a hood.

 

Lousy Outfit

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So I’m scanning the fluff fashion sites in search of something really awful or something really awesome and I come across Lucky Magazine’s “cute girl of the day.” Just as I’m expecting to find something targeting either men, lesbians, or any other inadvertent user of the Male Gaze, it switches to the title “cute *outfit* of the day.”

None of them seemed all that cute; they were largely inoffensive, but unexciting. This is the breaking fashion news? Stuff someone might put together halfway through their laundry timeline?

But this one–I’m still checking it over for some hint that she’s a troll inspired by the Man Repeller. All it needs is a skirt to make it the final shot in a monochrome-themed “Lesson in Layering.”